KPOW, CHINK, SPLAT:
Translations of Sound Effects
in Seven Comics
Vilma Kokko
MA thesis
University of Turku
School of Languages
and Translation Studies
Department of English;
English Translation and Interpreting
May 2013
TURUN YLIOPISTO
Kieli- ja käännöstieteiden laitos/humanistinen tiedekunta
KOKKO, VILMA: KPOW, CHINK, SPLAT: Translations of Sound Effects in Seven
Comics
Pro gradu -tutkielma, 106 s.
Englannin kieli, englannin kääntäminen ja tulkkaus
Toukokuu 2013
Tämä pro gradu -tutkielma käsittelee äänitehosteiden kääntämistä sarjakuvissa.
Tutkimus perustuu seitsemän eri sarjakuvan äänitehosteiden ja niiden suomennoksien
vertailuun. Tutkitut tehosteet on kerätty yhdeksi korpukseksi kolmesta Aku Ankka
-tarinasta, Tenavat- ja Lassi ja Leevi -stripeistä sekä Batman- ja Vartijatsarjakuvaromaaneista. Sarjakuvat edustavat osittain eri genrejä, jotta saadaan tietoa
erityyppisten sarjakuvien mahdollisesti erilaisista käännöskonventioista. Aku Ankka
-sarjakuvien määrää on painotettu, jotta olisi mahdollista saada tarkempi kuva yhdestä
yksittäisestä sarjakuvasta, jossa oletetaan äänitehosteiden pääsääntöisesti olevan
käännettyjä.
Äänitehosteita ja äänitehostekäännöksiä tutkitaan kahdesta eri näkökulmasta.
Tutkielman ensimmäisessä osassa tarkastellaan äänitehosteissa käytettyjä
käännösstrategioita ja etsitään seikkoja, jotka vaikuttavat eri käännösstrategioiden
käyttöön ja tehosteiden kääntämiseen tai kääntämättä jättämiseen. Kaindlin (1999)
esittelemää sarjakuvien käännösstrategiajaottelua verrataan Celottin (2008) kuvaan
upotettuihin teksteihin soveltuviin käännösstrategioihin. Näiden pohjalta muokattua
jaottelua käytetään käännösten analysointiin.
Korpuksessa yleisimmin käytetyt käännösstrategiat olivat alkutekstin siirtäminen
sellaisenaan käännökseen ja kääntäminen suomalaiseksi ilmaisuksi. Jonkin verran
esiintyi myös tehosteiden poistoja, siirtämisiä ja jopa lisäyksiä. Paljon muutoksia
tapahtui myös esimerkiksi tehosteiden ulkoasussa. Sarjakuvan tyyppi vaikutti oletusten
mukaisesti käännösstrategioihin; selvimmin aikuisille suunnatuissa sarjakuvissa paljon
tehosteita oli jätetty kääntämättä, kun taas erityisesti Aku Ankoissa tehosteidenkin
käännöksiin oli kiinnitetty huomiota. Myös tehosteen sijainti puhekuplassa, kuplan
ulkopuolella tai kuvaan upotettuna vaikutti siihen, oliko tehoste käännetty vai ei.
Tutkimuksen toisessa osassa äänitehosteet jaotellaan semanttisen sisältönsä mukaan
seuraaviin ryhmiin: iskut, rikkoutuminen, räjähdykset ja ampuminen, hankaus,
ilmavirta, ruoka ja nesteet, pitkäkestoiset äänet sekä äänenkorkeudeltaan selvästi
korkeat ja matalat äänet. Jaotteluperusteina toimivat äänten kuvaamat tapahtumat, äänen
syntymiseen osallistuvat materiaalit tai äänitehosteiden itsensä ominaisuudet. Ryhmien
esimerkeistä löytyi yhteisiä piirteitä, jotka selittynevät samanlaisten äänten
samanlaisella äännesymboliikalla tai samankaltaisilla onomatopoeettisilla piirteillä.
Asiasanat: kääntäminen, sarjakuvat, äänitehosteet, äännesymboliikka, äänen
matkiminen
Table of contents
1 Introduction................................................................................................................1
2 Comics.......................................................................................................................2
2.1 Definition...........................................................................................................2
2.2 The anatomy of comics......................................................................................6
2.2.1 Layout and its components: from grids to balloons...................................6
2.2.2 Text.............................................................................................................8
2.2.3 Pictures and icons.....................................................................................10
2.2.4 Between pictures and text: typography and borderline cases...................12
2.3 Previous research.............................................................................................13
2.3.1 History of comics.....................................................................................13
2.3.2 Role of comics in society.........................................................................15
2.3.3 Means of expression in comics.................................................................16
3 Comics in translation...............................................................................................18
3.1 The combination of word and picture..............................................................21
3.2 Problems of translating comics........................................................................25
3.3 Strategies of translating comics.......................................................................28
4 Sound effects............................................................................................................32
4.1 Onomatopoeia and sound symbolism..............................................................32
4.2 Sound effects....................................................................................................38
5 A case study of seven comics and their translations................................................42
5.1 Material, methods and hypothesis....................................................................42
5.2 Findings and discussion...................................................................................52
5.2.1 Applied translation strategies and factors affecting their usage...............52
5.2.1.1 Peanuts..............................................................................................53
5.2.1.2 Calvin and Hobbes............................................................................55
5.2.1.3 The Secret of Atlantis.......................................................................58
5.2.1.4 Dreamtime Duck of the Never-Never...............................................61
5.2.1.5 The Cowboy Captain of Cutty Sark..................................................63
5.2.1.6 Batman..............................................................................................66
5.2.1.7 Watchmen.........................................................................................68
5.2.2 Discussion on the translation strategies....................................................70
5.2.3 Sound effects by source............................................................................73
5.2.3.1 Impact...............................................................................................75
5.2.3.2 Friction..............................................................................................80
5.2.3.3 Air current.........................................................................................81
5.2.3.4 Sounds involving liquid and food.....................................................83
5.2.3.5 Breakage...........................................................................................86
5.2.3.6 Explosions and gunshots...................................................................89
5.2.4 Sound effects by property.........................................................................91
5.2.4.1 Sounds with long duration................................................................91
5.2.4.2 Pitch..................................................................................................93
5.2.5 Discussion on the sound effects................................................................98
6 Conclusion.............................................................................................................101
References.................................................................................................................104
List of abbreviations
AA: Aku Ankka magazine
DDB: The Secret of Atlantis by Carl Barks
DDR1: Dreamtime Duck of the Never-Never by Don Rosa
DDR2: The Cowboy Captain of the Cutty Sark by Don Rosa
PEA: Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz
C&H: Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson
BAT: Batman: Year One by Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli
WM: Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
List of tables
Table 1: Comparison of Kaindl's and Celotti's translation strategies for comics
30
Table 2: Some sound symbols in English according to Bloomfield (1933)
35
Table 3: Some sound symbols in English according to Rhodes (1994: 276-278) 36
Table 4: Synonyms of 'thump'
40
Table 5: English-language source texts in the corpus
43
Table 6: Finnish translations in the corpus
44
Table 7: Examples of sound effects and their translations in The Secret of Atlantis 59
Table 8: Sound effects and their translations in Batman
68
Table 9: Sound effects for impact
76
Table 10: Sound effects for friction
80
Table 11: Sound effects for air current
82
Table 12: Sound effects involving liquid and food
83
Table 13: Sound effects for breakage
87
Table 14: Sound effects for explosions and gunshots
89
Table 15: Sound effects with long duration
91
Table 16: High-pitched sound effects
95
Table 17: Low-pitched sound effects
96
Table 18: Suggested English sound symbols
99
Table 19: Suggested Finnish sound symbols
100
1 Introduction
Comics have established their place in the academic discourse as an interesting subject
of study. They have been examined from different angles, with focus falling mostly on
the comics themselves and their means of expression, their history, or on their role in
society (Herkman, 1996). Research on the sound effects of comics in the Finnish
academic discussion is scarce, however, and the translation of comics deserves further
attention in Finland because a great number of foreign comics are read in the country.
This thesis attempts to fill this gap in the Finnish research on comics through a case
study of the sound effects of seven different comics and their Finnish translations. The
study deals with a sample of comics from different genres, and it includes three different
Donald Duck stories, strips from Calvin and Hobbes and Peanuts, and parts of the
longer stories of Batman and Watchmen. The sound effects were gathered into a corpus
which was subsequently examined from two different angles. Firstly, the overall
translation strategies applied to the sound effects are analysed using a modified version
of Kaindl's (1999) typology of translation procedures in comics, with the relevant
strategies being here ‘repetitio’, ‘deletio’, ‘adiectio’, ‘substitutio’, ‘transmutatio’, and
‘translation’. The effects of the genre of a comic and the location of a sound effect
inside or outside speech balloons on how and if they are translated are examined and
discussed. Secondly, individual sound effects from the corpus are categorised based on
their semantic content and examined from the point of view of sound symbolism. Based
on similar features shared by several effects in a category, possible ways of expressing
certain meanings through the use of certain sounds and combinations of sounds are
suggested.
In order to establish the subject of this study properly, comics are first introduced,
defined, and examined in some detail. Examining comics is necessary in order to
recognise any characteristics which may have implications for the translation of comics.
After this introduction into comics, the implications of the characteristics are discussed
in closer detail specifically from the point of view of translation. Comics-specific
translation problems and strategies are introduced, and I formulate my own typology of
translation strategies in comics for the purposes of this study. Because comics' sound
1
effects are the more narrow focus of this study, they are introduced and examined next.
The aspects of onomatopoeia and sound symbolism are examined in the context of
sound effects, and the exact definition of ‘sound effect’ in this study is specified. The
discussion on comics, the translation of comics, and sound effects serves as a basis for
the empirical case study, which is presented once the theoretical foundations are
established.
2 Comics
2.1 Definition
Comics are published in many different forms; there are comics in newspapers,
magazines, albums, and on the Internet, for instance. Their uses range from entertaining
and advertising to informing and teaching. Thus, comics are an everyday phenomenon,
and everyone knows what they are. Some features are recognised as the most integral
parts of comics, and, if asked, most people would probably mention at least the use of
both pictures and text to tell a story or a joke. Further details could include, for example,
panels, speech balloons, a stereotypical cast of characters, and various kinds of
conventional symbols to indicate such aspects as movement and emotions. Some of the
elements mentioned above can be an important part of most comics, while others are
optional. Even a comic without text can tell a story. Some more experimental comics,
on the other hand, have reduced graphics to almost a minimum – with only punctuation
marks as the illustration – giving the texts a much more important role in the entirety.
Because of the variety of means that comics have for expressing themselves, it is
important to first establish what can be classified as comics and what cannot. However,
as the more experimental and imaginative of comics constantly remind us, it proves
difficult to give an exact, comprehensive definition to comics, even though they are
generally easily recognisable. Some definitions are discussed below in order to give an
idea of what features are typically recognised as the defining elements of comics.
Because of its nature, semiotics (defined by the Oxford Dictionary of English (2005) as
“[t]he science of communication studied through the interpretation of signs and symbols
as they operate in various fields, esp. language”) is interested in the topic of comics.
2
Gubern's description of comics in the Encyclopedia of Semiotics (2008) could be
summarised as follows: “Spatial sequences formed by graphically separated but
structurally related static images.” In addition, comics “may integrate written messages
in order to specify descriptive or narrative information and dialogues.” These two
quotes emphasise the importance of sequential images and regard text as an addition to
picture, though Gubern's article as a whole recognises the important role of text in
comics. In short, comics contain two or more connected, sequential pictures forming a
whole which can be complemented by text. This coexistence of words and pictures is
not only of interest to semioticians but is one of the main themes of research in the area.
Another description of comics is provided by Kaindl in his article on the translation of
comics. He proposes the following working definition for the purposes of studying the
translation of comics:
Comics are narrative forms in which the story is told in a series of at least two separate pictures.
The individual pictures provide context for one another, thus distinguishing comics from singleframe cartoons. Comics involve linguistic, typographic and pictorial signs and combinations of
signs as well as a number of specific components such as speech-bubbles, speed lines,
onomatopoeia etc., which serve particular functions. The form and use of these elements are
subject to culture-specific conventions.
(Kaindl, 1999: 264)
This definition certainly seems to serve its purposes, but it is not very short or concise.
It provides a somewhat more comprehensive picture of the typical characteristics of
comics and into what comics can express and how than the short quotes from Gubern.
The number of pictures or panels is, again, important in distinguishing between comics
and cartoons – and, indeed, almost any other pictures. It can be assumed that the
concept of context is emphasized in the definition for the purposes of translation, but it
is important to note nonetheless. A single comic strip can take for granted that readers
know what happens in the strip in question, but it may also refer to previous events,
characters, and repeated jokes in other strips of the same comic. Similarly, the reference
to culture-specific conventions is probably included because of the translator’s
perspective, but while these culture-specific conventions exist, they are not crucial to
defining comics. The definition also refers to several elements peculiar to comics, such
as speed lines and speech balloons (here referred to as speech-bubbles). These means of
expression are very important in comics and well worth mentioning, as comics use
expressive devices rarely found in other forms of narration.
3
In addition to the two definitions mentioned above, another definition for comics well
worth mentioning has been formed by the comics artist Scott McCloud (1993: 9), who
has also studied comics from a theoretical point of view. He presents the following
definition for comics: “Juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence,
intended to convey information and/or to produce an aesthetic response in the viewer.”
Here, the previously mentioned elements of pictorial and written content, sequence and
the conveying of information are present, and a possible aesthetic response is added to
the definition.
The definitions discussed above indicate that a short definition that would be
sufficiently accurate while being exclusive enough to include only the type of narration
generally accepted as comics is rather difficult to form, even if McCloud appears to
have quite efficiently condensed the important elements mentioned by most scholars
studying the subject. Nonetheless, attempts to define the art form provide a basis for the
discussion on what which elements are mandatory in comics and which are optional.
Based on the discussion above, among the defining elements of comics is pictorial
content, perhaps presented together with text and specific symbols or other iconic
material. The pictorial elements form some type of sequence and must be linked
somehow. Unlike for instance in films or animations, all of the pictures are
simultaneously accessible and occupy a space of their own. Thus, the layout of the
pictures must provide adequate information on the correct reading order, and the time
taken to read the pictures may vary. Simultaneously, the connected pictures serve as
context for each other, as mentioned above. The function of comics, on the other hand,
is to convey a story or a mood. For the purposes of this thesis, the following synthesis
based on the definitions introduced above could be used as a working definition: comics
are graphic narratives comprised of several separate, sequential images, which may
use text and conventionalised symbols in completing the message of the images or
replacing images. The layout and sequence of the pictures functions like metatext,
guiding the reader’s attention. This should not be understood as a definitive or final
definition, however, as comics come in various forms and experimental comics can
break even the standards outlined above. In addition, webcomics may complicate
matters further by making use of such devices as sound and animation, previously
inaccessible to comics. In this thesis, however, the examined comics all come in printed
form so the definition is sufficient in this context.
4
In addition to listing the central characteristics of comics, it is important to establish
their place in the literary field, or to discuss their location between the two traditionally
well-established mediums of fine arts and literature. This type of information does not
necessarily form part of the definition, but it is necessary in forming a complete picture
of what comics essentially are. Because art and literature have existed long before the
modern comic, their statuses as separate forms of “high art” have been established long
ago (see Manninen, 1996: 45-47). This may lead to problematic attitudes and
approaches to comics, which integrate both, as sometimes the elements of text and
picture are examined separately and judged individually rather than together. Obviously,
ignoring their complex interplay may result in both appearing somehow defective and
insufficient. This kind of an approach to comics has, for example, led to fears for
children’s language skills if comics are perceived to provide a “defective” example of
language. In comics, however, words and pictures interact to create a new form of
narration that should be analysed not only by the same means as images or texts but also
from the viewpoint of the interaction between them. This is also why calling comics a
literary genre is avoided in this thesis – it would be much more appropriate to speak of
different genres within the comics medium: humorous, superhero, graphic novel, and so
on.
It is also necessary to state that there seems to be no particular reason not to regard
comics as a form of art but their role as entertainment cannot be questioned, either, so
both terms are used in this paper without intending to take a stand on the value or status
of comics. Unfortunately, the lack of respect for comics has, in some cases, led to
comics being disregarded as an art form or a type of narrative. Not even all comics
artists and writers hold their work in very high regard. The English term ‘comics’ has
not been seen as very helpful in establishing the credibility of comics, either, and the
term ‘graphic novel’ has sprung into being in order to shake the connotations of humour
from this form of story-telling (Herkman, 1996 :17). Graphic novels, such as Neil
Gaiman’s Sandman series or Art Spiegelman’s Maus, are intended to be more serious,
respectable reading. They could be considered a kind of genre within comics – though it
could justifiably be claimed that there are different genres even within the array of
graphic novels – perhaps intended to be perceived as being nearer to the field of
literature than the average comics. However, some people shun the term and see it as
somehow artificial and forced.
5
2.2 The anatomy of comics
In order to combine the elements of picture and text comprehensibly, comics function
according to certain rules. The pictorial content takes a noticeable role and is most
commonly arranged to occupy the space by the means of ‘panels’ (also called ‘boxes’ or
‘frames’) (Eisner, 1990: 157). The outlines of the panels are typically called ‘borders’,
and the empty spaces between panels are referred to as ‘gutters’ (ibid.). Dialogue, if any,
is traditionally enclosed in ‘balloons’, or ‘locugrams’ in semiotic terms (Gubern, 2008),
with different types of balloons for different kinds of sounds or dialogues, such as
shouts, whispers or thoughts. Other textual components besides dialogue, such as
narration, can be separated from the images in several different ways. Specific symbols
are common and are used to express various meanings otherwise difficult to depict on
paper, and even a blank space can bear an important function. The different elements
clarify the composition of a comic but, more importantly, are also their means of
expression, as they all serve their own purposes. While it is often difficult to strictly
separate the different constituents that usually work seamlessly together, the different
translation-relevant elements are grouped below as clearly as possible, keeping in mind
the fact that they constantly overlap. Sound effects are among the components that
combine elements from several of the categories introduced below. Pictures, texts and
their combinations are discussed below in brief in order to give an idea of what kinds of
elements a translator works with when translating comics. Layout and its components,
such as panels, borders, balloons and gutters, are another essential element of comics,
but they are relevant in this context only to the extent that some aspects of them affect
sound effects and their translation. Balloons, for example, are relevant in the context of
sound effects because effects may be enclosed within spaces very similar to balloons.
2.2.1 Layout and its components: from grids to balloons
The main components of layout are introduced here in brief. The grid of a comic
indicates the reading order of its panels, and it can be manipulated in order to create
different kinds of effects. Panels, gutters, balloons, and even the design of a whole page
can manipulate the comic in several ways: for example, longer panels and wider gutters
can extent the time events take; a binocular-shaped panel shows that a scene is viewed
6
from a distance through binoculars; cloudlike, wavy-edged or scalloped panels can be
used in such unreal scenarios as dreams and flashbacks; bursts of emotion can be
presented in panels with jagged outlines; and black-and-white or coloured pictures can
be used to create different moods – or be used by different publications or publishers in
different countries (Eisner, 1990: 25-36; McCloud, 1993 & 2006; Rota, 2008: 82).
Differences in, for example, colouring and the size of the publication in different
countries affect the translation process, with the effects also manifesting themselves in
the context of sound effects. For example, the translations of Calvin and Hobbes vary in
whether or not they are coloured instead of plain black-and-white, which appears to
have had some impact on the translation of the sound effects (see section 5.2.1.2).
The components of layout can convey a lot of information in comics, but in this context,
especially the balloons within the panels are of most relevance because they may
contain sound effects. Speech balloons can come in several forms, and sometimes the
shapes can indicate their reading order: several balloons containing dialogue of one
speaker can be linked together in correct order in order to avoid having to add a tail to
each of them separately, and such balloons can interact with other balloons to simulate
discussion. Balloons have more functions than to merely serve as containers for text,
however, and especially the lines delimiting them, called ‘perigrams’ by semioticians
(Gubern, 2008), can be very expressive. A tone of voice can be presented with the help
of the perigram; perigrams can present coldness of a voice with the help of icicles or
flattery with dripping honey, for example. The system lends much character to a
person’s lines and reveals emotions better than plain text, and some information about
volume is also visible in the perigram. These functions partly overlap with those of
typography.
Different types of balloons show what types of sounds or dialogues they contain. Cloudlike thought and dream balloons, ‘psychopictograms’, can represent unvoiced text or
inner dialogue (ibid.), while jagged perigrams often mean electronically conveyed or
produced sound (Eisner, 1990: 27). These functions of a perigram make it highly useful
for illustrating different types of effects, and onomatopoeia and other sound effects can
sometimes be enclosed in different types of balloons, perhaps mimicking the sound in
question or depicting the process that created them.
7
2.2.2 Text
As text and picture co-operate in comics, they can occur in several different
combinations, and it is sometimes difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish between
text and picture. A case in point is typography, which refers to the graphic form of a text
– and is, consequently, separated into its own section in this chapter, along with some
other borderline cases. Sound effects frequently balance on the border between picture
and text because of their potentially close integration with the picture and their very
visual presentation. Nonetheless, much of the text in comics is easy enough to
differentiate from pictures, and much of it is separated from pictures with the help of
different boxes and perigrams.
The following types of texts can be found in comics, according to Celotti (2008: 38-39):
text inside balloons (‘spoken language’), ‘captions’, ‘titles’ and ‘linguistic paratext’.
Kaindl's (1999: 273-274) list also includes ‘onomatopoeia’, and uses slightly different
terms than Celotti, namely ‘dialogue texts’ for ‘spoken language’, ‘narrations’ for
‘captions’, and ‘inscriptions’ for ‘linguistic paratext’. Despite the different terms, the
main ideas behind the different concepts remain the same for both researchers. As the
reference to balloons suggests, dialogue texts are usually enclosed in locugrams of some
type or perhaps placed under the picture, while narrations or captions are often
contained in boxes. They may indicate changes in time and place, make comments, or
add to the message of the picture. Titles, as Kaindl (ibid.) says (citing Nord, 1993: 87)
have a “distinctive function”, and, in short, they serve the purposes of identification and
quick reference. Linguistic paratexts or inscriptions are texts that form a part of a
picture – for example, a picture of an open book can contain words, or a road sign can
state place names. The corresponding terms are used synonymously in this thesis.
‘Onomatopoeia’ generally refers to imitative expressions and is discussed below in
more detail in section 4.1.
Kaindl distinguishes between three types of onomatopoeia – “interjections, derivations
of nouns or verbs and invented words, which are formed from vowels and consonants
for their specific auditive quality” – without explaining them much further (1999: 274).
The concept of onomatopoeia is not in line with his other types of linguistic signs in
comics, however, as the others refer to quite specific types of texts with specific
8
locations and functions in a comic. In this context, I would prefer to replace Kaindl's
‘onomatopoeia’ with the non-verbal noises of a comic, excluding dialogue or narration,
and call it by the umbrella term ‘sound effect’, which encompasses not only
onomatopoeic expressions but also other types of sounds. Sound effects are discussed
and examined in further detail in section 4.
As their name indicates, dialogue texts represent dialogue of some sort. Along with
sound effects and narrations, they express sound and function like a sound track of a
film. Besides indicating changes in time and place, narration has the power to describe
moods or a person’s otherwise inaccessible thoughts in a very packed form (Celotti,
2008: 38). Onomatopoeia and sound effects represent background noise and can provide
the reader with information that is relevant to the story or helps create a certain
atmosphere. A title, on the other hand, is the opening of a story.
Text's expressiveness in comics partially arises from its co-operation with pictures, so it
is justified to study the relationships between the two elements more closely, especially
when considering translation. The complicated relationship between pictures and words
in comics has been described in several ways, two of which are introduced here. I would
suggest that being aware of these connections helps a translator especially in cases
where the translations are not obvious and the co-operation between text and picture
makes the translating difficult due to cultural or language-specific conventions.
According to McCloud (2006: 130), text and pictures co-exist in the following types of
combinations: word-specific, picture-specific, duo-specific, intersecting (previously
called ‘additive’ by McCloud), interdependent, parallel and montage. In the first
combination, words are illustrated by pictures and bear the information; in the second,
informative pictures are accentuated by words; in the third, both deliver roughly the
same message; and in the fourth, words and pictures work together while providing
their own pieces of information. In an interdependent combination, the parts convey an
idea together. A parallel combination, on the other hand, conveys two different
messages simultaneously, while in a montage, words and pictures are combined
pictorially. However, as Mikkonen points out, a panel can contain several types of
combinations and the combinations work on different levels of abstraction (1996: 84).
McCloud admits that they can occur simultaneously, but Mikkonen develops the
9
thought further by calling the intersecting and interdependent types general descriptions
that can exist simultaneously and describe the other categories. He also emphasises the
likely overlapping of the word-specific and picture-specific qualities of comics and
mentions that parallel combinations are relatively rare exceptions.
Another attempt at clarifying the functions of text and picture in comics was made by
Barthes in 1964 (cited in Celotti, 2008: 43). The division seems somewhat simpler than
that of McCloud’s, and Barthes uses just the French terms ‘ancrage’ and ‘relais’ to
describe the functions of text in relation to picture. As Celotti explains, text can ‘anchor’
or determine the meaning of a polysemous image. While anchoring text helps interpret
the meaning of an image, ‘relaying’ text and images are in a complementary relationship
and contribute to the narration as a whole. According to Mikkonen (1996: 87), Barthes,
too, accepts the fact that these functions can be fulfilled simultaneously. Other ways of
describing the interaction between picture and word have been suggested by at least
Fresnault-Deruelle (1972) and Tisseron (1987) (cited in ibid.), but they contain ideas
somewhat similar to the previously introduced ones.
As a conclusion to the discussion on the interaction of picture and text, it could be stated
that the relationship is complicated. It can be described in several ways, but in reality,
panels are constantly mixing the different types of combinations. This is, therefore, one
of the factors that grant comics a great freedom to narrate a story or a joke. Translators
are also affected by this variety, being either bound or aided by the different means of
expression. Much can be expressed through different emphases, and the choice of
combination can affect the mood, emphasis, pace, concreteness, immediacy, familiarity
and other aspects of the story (McCloud, 2006: 130-141).
2.2.3 Pictures and icons
Pictorial content could be argued to be the most important means of expression in
comics. Pictures have the power to express meanings and convey moods. The choices of
tools, techniques, styles and genres affect the entire comic, and choices on the amount
of details, cast of characters, backgrounds, different perspectives and levels of
abstraction are important in all drawing and visual arts.
10
Other forms of visual art have been in the centre of attention for much longer than
comics, and the wealth of research on visual arts will not be discussed here. It suffices
to say that the function of representational art, as opposed to abstract or symbolical art,
is to depict and show something. Simply put, in comics, too, pictures mostly show while
words tell. Here, I will focus on one of the pictorial devices very typically used in
comics: iconic material.
Iconic or symbolic material functions on different levels of abstraction, and pictures or
icons can represent objects and concepts without having to look like them – on
condition that people are familiar with them. Icons are common in comics. They are
also one of the essential elements of comics, and many of the icons used in comics are
not regularly used outside the medium. They can capture many aspects of a situation,
such as speed, movement, feelings, states and sensory information. Movement and its
direction and other qualities are depicted through such means as speed lines (McCloud,
1993: 110-113). A movement’s impact on its environment, too, can be expressed with
the help of clouds of dust, jagged lines at the point of impact or other similar devices
(Eisner, 1990: 150). Even different kinds of sensory information can be surprisingly
well conveyed merely through the sense of sight. Symbols and icons can also provide a
glimpse into a person’s internal world, and a number of symbols have been developed
for expressing emotions. Different states of mind, such as confusion or intoxication, can
be indicated with certain symbols, such as hearts, stars, birds or planets revolving
around a person’s head or popping bubbles rising from a character (McCloud, 1993:
127-128). In short, symbols are highly expressive when the knowledge of their meaning
is shared by the artist and the reader. They help stretch the limits of what moods and
stories comics can convey to include at least the physical and mental states of characters
as well as some movement and dynamism, and they affect the metaphorical dimensions
of comics. Interestingly, similar silent states of mind can be expressed with the help of
sound effects especially in Japanese manga. Those not familiar with these conventions
usually require an explanation from the translator to understand the message.
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2.2.4 Between pictures and text: typography and borderline cases
In comics, there are numerous cases where it is difficult to distinguish between text and
picture and more examples still of elements that arguably are neither, such as detached
punctuation marks and grawlixes (see below). Some elements, such as typography, are
most appropriately studied as a group of their own. Typography involves visual and
textual elements in such a way that it is impossible to classify typography into either of
the two categories.
Distinctive typography can be found especially in sound effects, but dialogue can also
benefit greatly from it. Its functions are, as already stated, partly similar to those of
perigrams. The size and font of the lettering or the lines with which they are printed or
drawn can describe the quality of a voice. For example, loudness is easily indicated by
size, boldness and tilt of the text in addition to exclamation marks (McCloud, 2006:
147). Timbre, or the quality of a sound, for example its roughness, waviness, sharpness
or fuzziness, can be indicated through the typography. In addition, McCloud mentions
the variable of association, which can be evoked through “font styles and shapes that
refer to or mimic the source of the sound” (ibid.). Kaindl (1999: 274) mentions that
movement, directionality and speed can be indicated through the lettering. Emotion and
mood, too, can be evoked through typography (e.g. Eisner, 1990: 12). Bold lettering in
dialogue, on the other hand, is often used for emphasis, especially in American comics
(e.g. ibid.: 152). In a further example, different fonts have been used in Astérix comics
to indicate languages, nationalities or origins, with Germanic fonts for Gothic speakers,
hieroglyphs for Egyptians and so forth (Kaindl, 1999:274). In such a case, the font
contributes to the speaker’s character and allows the reader to identify individual
characters as members of a single group without any further explanation. Sadly, the
typographical possibilities can sometimes be almost completely ignored. In Germany in
the 1950s, for example, attempts to increase the status of comics led to texts being
written in typescript, not handlettering (Kaindl, 1999: 272).
As already emphasised, typography is not the only element of comics where it is
difficult to separate picture from text. Profanities are one such case, too. In many
comics, swear words are replaced with a string of hand-drawn or printed symbols, for
example #$&@. Unofficially known as ‘grawlixes’ (World Wide Words website, 2008),
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these institutionalised symbols represent swear words in text, and they can function in
the same way as text or letters in this context. They are, however, not letters in the
traditional sense as they do not represent sounds and resemble other icons in comics
considerably. They are a part of the language of comics – and difficult to classify as text
or icons. Another example of borderline cases is the use of the punctuation marks !
and ? (McCloud, 1993: 134). They can be placed either directly into pictures or speech
balloons, often around or near a person’s head, for example, to indicate puzzlement or
realisation. In addition, sleeping is often indicated by a series of Zs and a row of full
stops can represent a meaningful silence. These and all the previous elements are a part
of comics’ expressiveness, but they can mean more work for the translator.
2.3 Previous research
Much of the research on comics takes a multidisciplinary approach to the subject, and
comics have been studied within many different disciplines, such as sociology and
translation studies. According to Herkman (1996: 24-25), the following three aspects of
comics have been of most interest to researchers: the history of comics, comics in
society, and the means of expression of comics. Several of these topics and aspects may
be used in a single study, and they are by no means separate – nor do they rule each
other out. My main focus here is on the means of expression, sound effects in particular.
The translation of comics in general can be related to the role of comics in society when
considering, for instance, what is translated and why or how much it is altered and in
what ways. The different points of view and disciplines involved in the different types
of studies are briefly introduced below, together with information on what the different
fields of study typically focus on.
2.3.1 History of comics
According to Herkman (ibid.), studies on the history of comics are perhaps the most
common type of comics research and they may focus on a particular series, artist or
genre or on comics in general. History, however, is always written from some point of
view and is never completely neutral, which can easily be seen from the studies on
comics as well. For instance, it is surprisingly easy to find contradictory statements on
13
various subjects on the history of comics, such as which the first comics were and when
they were made. McCloud (1993: 17), for example, cites Rodolphe Töpffer as the
creator of the first modern comics but also describes considerably older works, such as a
pre-Columbian picture manuscript from the 16 th century and the Bayeux tapestry
depicting the Norman conquest of the 11th century (ibid.: 10-13), both showing actions
by the means of sequential pictures, as comics. This is natural considering his definition
of comics. Eisner (1990: 7), however, simply states that the first comics were published
around 1934. A common suggestion is that the first comic published was Yellow Kid by
Richard Outcault from 1896 (see e.g. Herkman, 1996: 13). There are numerous other
suggestions as well, which reflects the ambiguity of this type of research.
It is understandable, then, that Herkman (ibid.: 27) raises some criticism concerning the
research conducted in this field. One problem he highlights is that the research centres
around the United States, though he states that it is natural for the American comics
industry to be so well represented as it is one of the most visible ones. It is unfortunate,
however, that comics from other countries that are influential in the field of comics do
not receive an equal amount of attention. Some European countries and Japan, for
example, have their own comics traditions that are worthy of attention. The Japanese
manga and the typical Western comics are admittedly fairly different in both their form
and their development, so it is understandable that they are not always dealt with in the
same research. This thesis, too, examines only Western comics, translated from English
into Finnish. In general, however, it is should be kept in mind that there are several
different types of comics besides the traditional Western comics and that all of these
deserve recognition.
Another problem Herkman sees in this type of research is a tendency to ignore women
working in the field of comics (ibid.: 25-27). Whereas comics themselves can be filled
with both very stereotypical men and very stereotypical women, the histories written
about them seem to have focused on male artists to a much greater extent. Apparently,
even the basic works on comics focus mostly on the men in the industry, despite the fact
that women have also been prolific creators of comics. In short, there appears to be a
tendency to concentrate on American comics and on male creators of comics in this type
of research.
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2.3.2 Role of comics in society
Herkman (ibid.: 24 & 28) lists psychology, sociology, pedagogics, economics and
political science as the main disciplines studying comics as a societal phenomenon. The
focus has been on the social and psychological effects of comics, and examples of this
type of research are easy to find. Like most – if not all – new phenomena in popular
culture directed at relatively young audiences, comics sparked off a lively debate in the
1950s on whether or not they had dangerous effects on their readers or on the
surrounding society (Kauranen, 2008: 15). At first, it was believed that reading comics
would result in defective linguistic skills, ethically dubious behavioural patterns, moral
decay, and disregard for societal structures in the readers, mostly children, as well as
negative foreign influences being introduced into a country (ibid.: 26).
The first quasi-scientific works written on the alleged dangers of the new form of
narration were, as Kauranen (ibid.: 439) mentions, a beginning for more serious
research on comics. They cannot, however, be regarded as real comics research for a
rather simple reason: instead of using scientific methods to scrutinize comics or their
relationship with their environment, the so-called research often simply made
assumptions on the effects of comics on the young and the impressionable. Seduction of
the Innocent by Fredric Wertham from 1953 is one of the works on comics’ alleged
effects on society and its members given as an example by Herkman (1996: 28-29).
Another well-known example, also mentioned by Herkman, is Para Leer al Pato
Donald (How to Read Donald Duck) from 1971. This Chilean statement is clearly
Marxist, and its main goal was to uncover and explore the societal and economic
ideologies behind Disney comics from its own point of view (ibid.).
The first studies affected the comics industry considerably. In the US, the discussion
raised by the critical commentaries, especially by the work Seduction of the Innocent,
led to the creation of the Comics Code, which dictated what kinds of topics comics were
allowed to depict and what was considered improper and not to be printed. The original
code from 1954 included, for instance, guidelines for how to represent criminals and
police officers, and such instructions as “in every instance good shall triumph over evil”
(Lambiek website 1). The restrictions even prohibited or discouraged using the words
‘crime’, ‘horror’ and ‘terror’ in the titles of comics magazines. Similarly, comics were
15
not allowed to show, for example, crime in too much detail or depict it in an
understanding or admiring light, nor contain such scary elements as torture, vampires,
cannibalism and ‘werewolfism’. Sexually explicit – or implicit – content and, in
general, almost any behaviour then considered immoral or abnormal was also
prohibited. Publishers let their comics publications be inspected by the Comics
Magazine Association of America’s (CMAA) Comics Code Authority (CCA). This was,
however, theoretically voluntary as the CCA had no legal authority to enforce the
Comics Code. Similarly, Finnish publishers, among others, performed some “quality
control” themselves but escaped having to conform to official restrictions (Kauranen,
2008: 442). In other words, self-censorship emerged from the discussion and affected a
large part of the comics industry. Small underground publishers rebelled, however,
ignoring the restrictions and developing their own styles, and comics, in fact, continued
evolving even under the restrictions (Herkman, 1996: 28).
The strict regulations from over fifty years ago serve as a reminder of the fears and
attitudes surrounding comics at the time. However, the attitudes towards comics and the
amount of respect for them have changed considerably since the 1950s. Comics are
gaining more prestige as an art form, a form of entertainment, and a research subject
even in America, and with such new factors as graphic novels and manga in the comics
field, there is now variation and selection in the market. In some countries, comics have
been quite respected for long before – in France, for example, they are called le
neuvième art, ‘the ninth art’. Thus, on the whole, comics enjoy a rather good status and
have established their place among the other, more traditional media and art forms. The
new research on the societal effects of comics, too, now focuses more on the positive
effects of this form of popular culture, with a more scientific approach than its
predecessors. In short, the newly found respect for comics has led to changes in the
motivation and approaches of comics research.
2.3.3 Means of expression in comics
Unlike the other two main trends in the research of comics, the third one introduced
here focuses mainly on comics themselves. Different means of expression peculiar to
comics are used to deliver a message, and these means are a fairly popular subject of
16
study. The previously described co-existence of words and pictures has led to comics
using their own, distinctive language. As mentioned, semiotics is one of the disciplines
that have successfully applied its methods to studying this aspect of comics. Different
disciplines examining the relation of text and pictures in general can be applied to
comics, and translation studies, for example, can certainly benefit from such research.
My research on the sound effects of comics and their translation mainly falls into this
category.
Even though semiotics itself does not focus solely on comics, it has spawned studies
concerning only them. Comics are an ideal subject for semiotic studies as, without
going into further detail, the main idea of the discipline is to study different phenomena
from the point of view of signs and sign systems (Barthes, 1988: 9, 95). Herkman
(1996: 30-31) presents the following well-known examples of some of the first semiotic
studies on comics: Umberto Eco’s studies of different comics from the 1960s, La bande
dessinée. L’univers et les techniques de quelques “comics” d’expression française by
Pierre Fresnault-Deruelle from 1972, and Comics lesen. Untersuchungen zur Textualität
von Comics by Ulrich Krafft from 1978. While the study on comics’ means of
expression already began in the 1960s in Europe, the first comics-centred works written
in English were published in the 1980s and were not yet on the same level of
sophistication as some of the earlier studies (ibid.). As semioticians became interested in
the topic, serious research on comics became more common and scholars began
contributing to the particular research area.
Will Eisner and Scott McCloud are perhaps the best-known contributors to comics
research in English. Eisner’s Comics and Sequential Art from 1985, drawing from the
author’s experience as an artist and a teacher in the field of comics (Eisner, 1990: 5-6),
is a well-known and much-read book that has provided inspiration for later research.
Scott McCloud, among others, was acquainted with the work before creating his own
analysis on comics, published under the title Understanding Comics. The Invisible Art
in 1993. As another comics professional, McCloud developed some of the Eisner's ideas
further and presented fresh ideas that would, in turn, often be quoted and discussed
(Herkman, 1996: 31). Many of the ideas are still considered to hold their ground and
serve as a basis for much of the current research, including parts of this thesis.
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Despite semioticians’ efforts to understand and study comics, Herkman (ibid: 32)
mentions that the current semiotic studies have been criticised for looking at the subject
from too narrow a perspective. He points out that post-structuralists have found it to be
a considerable weakness that the studies focus on the expressiveness of comics but tend
to forget the reader’s role in interpreting the message. The idea of Barthes, for example,
is that the text means nothing in itself if it is not read and that the relationship between
the reader and the text should thus be studied properly as well (ibid.). It appears,
however, that research that takes into account the different aspects related to publishing
and audience is still scarce (ibid.). Translation studies, however, deal with these topics
frequently.
3 Comics in translation
Whether or not comics are considered a 'genre' of literature, as Kaindl (1999: 264)
suggests, or an art form of their own, they are undoubtedly a unique combination of
word and picture. This means that they also require the translator to acknowledge the
aspects discussed above in section 2.2 in order to make the combination of different
elements function properly in the foreign language version of a comic as well.
The translation of comics involves not only transferring written material into another
language but also negotiating pictorial content and all other material with the new
environment of the target culture. As such, the translation of comics can be viewed from
two angles: a linguistic point of view and a more holistic perspective. The linguistic
aspect is focused on more in the later chapters of this thesis, which discuss sound effects
in comics, but a more holistic perspective is also applied when examining what factors
affect the choice of leaving a sound effect untranslated. The role of the different yet
intertwined components of comics is crucial in the translation process because the nonlinguistic content is as important as, if not even more important than, the textual
elements in comics. This is why the non-linguistic aspects of adjusting and transferring
a comic into the new target culture are examined before proceeding into the actual
translation problems in comics.
Before a translator starts working on a comic, some general decisions must be made not
18
only on which comics are translated but also on how and to what degree the comic is
adjusted to the target culture. It is up to the publisher or translator to decide for each
comic what has to be omitted or changed to comply with target culture norms and
standards, company policies, and financial factors. Factors that may lead to changes are,
for example, a need for political correctness, an aversion to paying royalties, and strong
local conventions on what comics are expected to look like. Examples of the changes
brought about by the aforementioned factors are Lucky Luke's cigarette being turned
into a blade of grass in the Swedish version of the comic in order to make it more
“proper”, the name of Groucho Marx being switched to Felix coupled with the deletion
of the characteristic moustache in the fear of violating copyrights in the American
version of Dylan Dog, and the adaptation of foreign comics into the typical publishing
format of the French comic tradition (Celotti, 2008: 36). Each country's tradition not
only determines what kind of comics translations are produced in and brought into the
country in question but also affects what kind of adjustments are deemed necessary in
the translation process.
As can be seen from the examples above, changes take place on several levels. A radical
change takes place when a comic is moulded into a different shape to suit a different
format of publishing, with the division of panels into pages being disrupted, among
other alterations. A notable change on a more local level is when the imagery of a comic
is retouched, a change which can, as the aforementioned omission of the cigarette, have
a significant effect on the overall tone of the comic. Finally, changes can take place on a
textual level. Such changes are hardly a surprise, and they do not always need to be as
radical as the example of completely erasing a clear reference to a well-known person
and changing the identity of the character in the comic.
Clearly, many aspects must be considered when introducing a comic into a new market.
Because of the complexity of the process and the many changes involved, it is necessary
to consider the translation of comics as a more holistic process of editing and adjusting
than simply transferring the text sections into another language. Since several factors
not related to translation come into play, the translation of comics could be in some
ways be compared to the process of 'localisation' in the field of IT (see e.g. Dunne,
2006, for more on localisation). Even though the term 'localisation' is primarily used in
the context of IT, in software localisation for example, and the definition involves the
19
aspect of digital content, the list of what localisation involves resembles what is done in
comics, as well. It involves "(a) translation of textual content into the language and
textual conventions of the target locale; and (b) adaptation of non-textual content (from
colors, icons and bitmaps, to packaging, form factors, etc.)" (Dunne, 2006: 4). Colours,
icons and packaging of an IT product could be equated with the colours, the pictorial
content – for example symbolic material and typography – and the publication format of
a comic.
There are other parallels between the processes, too. Dunne explains that localisation
involves numerous different factors ranging from marketing and management to various
sales strategies and corporate legal counsel (2006: 2). Some of these are applicable to
the process of transferring a comic into a new market: First of all, there are often sales
to consider – a comic is unlikely to be translated if nobody is going to buy it in the
target culture, while a comic considered to be good for business may be hurried into the
market for quick profit and without much adjustment, which may leave the new version
somewhat unfinished. Secondly, marketing might require a product to be adjusted to the
tastes of the target audience, and, finally, copyrights should not be infringed. Some
problems in the process of localisation can also be shared by the process of transferring
comics into another culture. For instance, different actors may be unaware of the
importance or impact of factors outside their own domain, for example when
"[e]xecutives as well as sales and marketing personnel are often unaware of the ways in
which linguistic, legal, and cultural issues can impact on a product's usability, image,
and even legality" (ibid.) or when translators are not aware of the sales aspects or the
motives of the localisation process.
Even though Finnish publishers remain relatively faithful to the original work, for
example publishing most comic albums in their original shape and size, many types of
changes commonly take place in the process of bringing a comic into a different market.
Thus, because 'translation', while by no means being a simple task, is generally
understood as the translation of text, it can sometimes prove to be too narrow a term for
describing the whole process which takes place before a comic is published in a new
market for a new target audience – involving not only the translation of the text but also
for example changing the publication's size and retouching the pictures. For the
purposes of this thesis, when it is necessary to make a distinction between the transfer of
20
text and everything that is involved in the transfer of the the entire product into a new
culture, the terms 'translation' and 'localisation' are used respectively. This thesis
focuses, nonetheless, more on the translation process than on the localisation process
because textual elements are taken under scrutiny. Localisation also includes, however,
many processes that originate from outside the (visual) text of the product itself. The
“translation” of pictures is more closely associated with the translation of text than with
the production process. This is why the word 'editing' is sometimes more appropriate
when referring to changing pictorial and other non-textual material.
3.1 The combination of word and picture
One of the factors making it hard to distinguish the translation of text from a more
extensive editing of the comic is the previously mentioned close connection between
picture and text in comics, manifesting itself in such aspects as typeface and sound
effects. For example, pictures interfere with writing in the case of highly visual sound
effects and text with picture in the case of linguistic paratext. Ideally, then, the
translation process of a comic would involve extracting all textual material, even from
the pictures and sound effects, translating it in the spirit of the original, and re-inserting
it into the picture in a similar graphic form.
While visual elements can combine with text, language may invade pictures even in
other forms besides sound effects. A good example of this can be found in Astérix. The
French expression “voir trente-six chandelles” (“to see 36 candles”) refers to something
quite familiar from the world of comics: the state of confusion and pain caused by a
blow to the head (Robert, 2007: 392). Its English counterpart 'to see stars' is fairly
similar to the French expression, but the difference can be crucial: in comics from the
Anglo-American tradition stars are drawn around a person's head, but in Obélix et
Compagnie (Goscinny & Uderzo, 1976: 11), candles take the place of stars. In this case,
a linguistic expression has affected the drawing on a more complex level than simply
being embedded in the picture, as sound effects commonly are. It does not necessarily
have to affect a translator's task, but it might be necessary to add an explanatory
footnote to the comic. Otherwise, in this type of a situation, altering the relevant
graphics might be in order.
21
The interplay between visual and textual language has received due attention in
scholarly debate. There are several alternative approaches to the matter, however. Many
sources name the translation of comics as a form of 'constrained translation' (e.g. Grun
& Dollerup, 2003; Valero Garcés, 2000). The concept of constrained translation refers to
situations in which spatial factors affect the translation process. Introduced by Titford
(1983) and further discussed by, among others, Mayoral, Kelly and Gallardo (1988),
constrained translation theory takes non-linguistic aspects of translation much more into
account than traditional text-centred approaches, which makes it highly applicable in the
context of comics and many forms of audio-visual translation.
Valero Garcés points out that both quantitative and qualitative constraints are present in
comics (2000: 77). On one hand, the space available is limited. On the other hand, the
pictures and other non-linguistic elements restrict how far the text can deviate from the
original text or, rather, how much it can deviate from the meaning conveyed by the
other, non-linguistic content. Again, the complicated interplay of picture and text is
apparent. Stretching the definition of constrained translation, Grun and Dollerup add
into the equation the aspect of comics as serving a specific objective (2003: 198). In
other words, requirements originating from outside the comic's 2D form can also be
limiting factors in the translation process. These requirements are imposed by the
conventions of a particular genre or expectations of a publisher, for example. However,
Grun and Dollerup only mention the requirement of humour or, possibly, light
entertainment as one of these external factors, as does Valero Garcés. In the case of such
ambitious and serious graphic novels as Watchmen by Moore and Gibbons or Maus by
Spiegelman, the references to humour are incorrect and a wider range of external
requirements must be recognised.
A very theoretical and complicated view into constrained translation is introduced by
Mayoral, Kelly and Gallardo (1988: 359). The terminology used reflects the jargon used
in transmitting signals, with message being equated with signal, and includes such terms
as 'noise', 'redundancy' (terms dating back to a 1948 mathematical model of
communication by Shannon and Weaver) and several types of 'synchrony'. To keep the
explanation relatively short and understandable, only the concept of synchrony is
examined further as it is of most relevance here. Synchrony, or “the agreement between
signals emitted for the purpose of communicating the same message” (ibid.), exists in
22
its various forms as defined by Mayoral, Kelly and Gallardo:
synchrony of time: agreement in time of different signals which communicate a unit of
information,
spatial synchrony: the signal [sic] occupy either more or less space than that which corresponds
to them,
content synchrony: the meanings transmitted by different signals contradict neither each other the
whole message [sic],
phonetic synchrony: synchrony of sound signals of spoken dialogue with the visible speech
movements on the screen,
character synchrony: the harmony between the image of the character and his or her voice and
words.
(Mayoral, Kelly & Gallardo, 1988: 359)
Except for phonetic synchrony and to some extent synchrony of time, all of the above
are arguably relevant to comics. The different types of synchrony show what aspects
must be taken into consideration in the translation of comics, too. In order to achieve
synchrony, the translated text must be in line with other visual information and in its
correct place, take only as much space as is available, and be in line with how its source
– human or non-human – would articulate it. The concept of content synchrony is
connected to what Valero Garcés mentions about qualitative constraints – text is limited
in how much it can deviate from the original meaning because it must not contradict
other messages. Synchrony of time and spatial synchrony are similar to Valero Garcés'
quantitative constraints. Simply put, the constrained translation approach asserts that the
text that is translated in a comic must not contradict the images and other non-textual
content of the comic.
Even though the constrained translation approach appears valid and has frequently been
adopted in the context of comics, it also has its critics. The problem mainly lies in the
restraining and, in general, complicating role attributed to the non-verbal elements – an
aspect very centrally visible even in the choice of the term 'constrained translation'.
According to Zanettin (2009: 39), words are usually seen and treated as subordinate to
images in the academic discussion on comics. Simultaneously, the discussion mainly
appears to centre around text. The focus shifts to non-verbal elements only when they
complicate the translation of textual content. This is seen as a problem, and Zanettin
(ibid.) warns against this kind of an approach that assumes pictures as a constraint or a
hindrance, a point also reflected in the work of several other researchers. Celotti, for
example, describes a positive step that has been taken “away from the constrained
23
translation approach” towards a more positive thinking in which the visual message is
'“read” together with the verbal language in order to grasp the globality of meanings'
(Celotti, 2008: 34). In general, pictures are a resource rather than a constraint as they
support and enrich the text and serve their part in carrying the storyline. More strongly
put, the text and its message are not complete without the pictures and other nonlinguistic content.
Zanettin's warnings against seeing pictures as a mere hindrance are also backed up by
the technical fact that pictorial content is by no means untouchable but, instead,
frequently modified, with the modifications ranging from omitting whole pages to
redrawing panels (2009: 39). In short, the need for strict adherence to the various types
of synchrony in comics is not as straightforward as it may first seem. In a difficult
situation, it is also possible to change the visual content, not just text. The fact that
pictures in comics can be retouched, as displayed with more examples below, finally
refutes the idea that textual content is restrained by the other content of comics in
translation.
In practice, however, it is very natural that the research on the translation of comics
becomes text-centred and problem-oriented. The translator is, after all, primarily
assumed to work with text, and research on translations is traditionally about text, with
text being the focus of translation. The warnings against forgetting pictorial content or,
on the other hand, seeing it only as a problematic companion to text are quite justified.
In the translations in my corpus, for example, there are several justified omissions of
sound effects which would not be possible without the presence and support of the
visual content. Completely ignoring the difficulties stemming from the importance of
non-linguistic elements in comics, however, is not justifiable, either. If mainly – or only
– text is translated, the other, non-linguistic components of the message remain
relatively unaltered but are still closely attached. In such a situation, some mismatch is
only to be expected.
The strategies used to cope with such a complicated situation are, naturally, numerous.
The images can be retouched in several ways for different reasons in addition to the text
being altered. The changes can be fairly subtle but potentially essential to the success of
the translation. Some of them hardly have anything to do with the translation of the text
24
but are modifications deemed necessary for other reasons, perhaps to adapt a comic to
the target culture conditions. Grun and Dollerup provide an analysis of the visual
changes made into a single page of a 1950 and a 1969 Danish translation of Carl Barks'
Donald Duck story (2003: 205-209). Even a brief look into such a limited material
reveals different changes and motives behind the changes.
To summarise what can be seen from the changes that Grun and Dollerup have
identified in the finished localisation of the comic, there appear to be various reasons for
altering the comic: Firstly, the opening panel contains many changes probably because
of the title which takes up a lot space in the panel – changing the title is bound to affect
its environment, too. This is an example of how the “oppression” of the picture has been
overcome in a rather straightforward way, by changing the picture. Secondly, an
apparently conscious choice of transferring the comic to a different season (from a mild
American winter to a Nordic autumn) has affected the colouring of the whole comic and
is emphasised by specifically mentioning September in the lines of a character. Here,
the foreign setting has been domesticated and turned into a more local setting that does
not confuse the reader and draw their attention away from the story. Thirdly, a
“mistake” has been spotted in one panel and corrected in the localisation, as a horizon
that ends in the middle of a panel in the original comic continues all the way through it
in the Danish version. Lastly, some changes have been made without any apparent
reason. For example, speech balloons have been re-drawn but do not really fit the
translation, and some parts of the picture have been altered or left out entirely.
As can be seen from the discussion above, the localisation of a comic involves a lot
more than just translating text, which also shows how the translation of comics is not so
constrained, after all. However, major changes may not always be possible in comics,
and all translation has its problems.
3.2 Problems of translating comics
Because the translation of text in comics shares many of its features with translation in
general, only the translation problems highly characteristic of comics in particular are
discussed in this section. Many types of problems are addressed in the academic
25
discussion on translating comics. There have been, first of all, purely technical issues
involved in the process. Zanettin (2009: 39) explains that technical factors were a real
hindrance at least in the time before computers – back then, removing and replacing text
was a labour-intensive task consisting of scraping off content from the original pictures
and replacing them by hand. He points out that more work would have meant a more
expensive comic, and changing graphics such as sound effects would perhaps have been
perceived as much too costly. Nowadays, retouching pictures in computer files is both
much easier and much cheaper, which makes more comprehensive adjustment much
easier, as becomes evident from the discussion in the previous section.
Other possible issues that arise from outside the translated text are brought up by Valero
Garcés (2000: 77). Firstly, the translator may only work with and make changes to the
text, not the surrounding picture. Secondly, the translator may only have access to the
text of the comic without seeing the context, though Valero Garcés does not mention
how common this method is and when it is used. There may be differences between
methods not only in different countries but also in different publishing houses, for
instance.
The text of a comic is what the translator ultimately works with, however. It is where
the problems are realised, even if they stem from reasons beyond the text. The
translation problems can be viewed from several angles, one of which has already been
discussed above in more detail: as explained, the constrained translation approach sees
the constraints of relevance and space as a problem to be solved by the translator.
Similar constraints of space to some extent also apply to creating the original comics,
however. While the artist obviously has great freedom in placing, shaping and sizing the
spaces reserved for text, the comics format sets some boundaries to the artist's work: a
comic cannot comprise only text because it is not a novel, nor can it contain too much
text in proportion to pictures without affecting the legibility and format of the comic to
a distracting degree. Therefore, the constraint of space is not strictly unique to the
translation process. The constraint of relevance, on the other hand, does not affect the
creator and the translator of a comic in the same way. For the translator, the constraints
are obviously stricter. The “restricting” elements also set different requirements for the
translation: empty speech balloons, for example, would not be acceptable in a
translation, except for some valid reason.
26
More general textual issues can also be discussed in this context. Valero Garcés
classifies problems as arising from the type of comic and the language used, from the
influence of frames and similar restricting elements, and from difficulties of the
reproducing or translating of iconic language such as onomatopoeia, sounds and noises
(2000: 78). The restrictions were already discussed above, but the two other points have
not yet received much attention. The type of comic, in other words the genre of the
comic, affects the way in which the comic is translated. Among others, funny comics
have to be translated in a funny style and graphic novels with due seriousness. However,
this challenge is present in other forms of translation as well. There hardly is a need to
discuss this otherwise important issue in the specific context of comics, and such issues
as re-creating the spirit of different characters or dealing with culture-specific references
are perhaps better discussed in other works on translation.
On the other hand, the aforementioned onomatopoeia, sounds and noises are comicsspecific features that deserve further attention, and some of them have been studied
before (see e.g. Sierra Soriano, 1999, for a case study of the translation of interjections
in Tintin comics). Sound effects are sometimes difficult to translate because they require
knowledge about the conventions on writing sounds in both languages, and even with
the knowledge it may, at times, be difficult to decipher what a particular sound effect
means in a particular context. The appearance and location of a sound effect in a panel
may not provide sufficient clues as to its meaning. Ambiguity in the original effect
obviously makes it difficult to recreate the sound in the target language. English uses
lexicalised words as sound effects quite effortlessly, and English sound effects have had
a strong influence on those in other languages because American comics are
widespread. The influence is so substantial that even comics written in other languages
borrow some well-established English effects. Because the English effects are so
familiar even outside English-language cultures, finding an established, native way of
describing a sound can be difficult, though this leaves room for the translator's
creativity. In translations, there appears to be some reluctance to alter well-established
sound effects even when it would be relatively easy to modify their transcriptions. For
example, the transcriptions of “BANG” and “SMASH” would be easy to make look
more Finnish (“BÄNG” and “SMÄSH”), but no such changes were found in my corpus.
The translation of sound effects is examined in detail in my case study involving sound
27
effects and their translations. Before moving on to the study, however, I will discuss the
translation strategies to show the range of possibilities of dealing with different
problems arising in the translation of comics.
3.3 Strategies of translating comics
Grun and Dollerup's observations, discussed in section 3.1, provide a glimpse into the
various kinds of changes that can take place in the translation of comics. However, a
more comprehensive and systematic analysis and typology of translation procedures in
comics – including the localisation and “translation” of pictures – is offered by Kaindl,
who bases his division on Delabastita's (1989) work on film translation. Delabastita's
typology is tailored to audio-visual translation because it takes into account both
pictures and words. It functions mostly on a local level, and several strategies may be
used within a single panel. Kaindl's typology of translation strategies for comics is
introduced below, compared to other theories on the translation of comics, and used to
examine the translated sound effects of my corpus in chapter 5.
Translation strategies are divided into six categories, originally named by Delabastita
and referred to by Kaindl: 'repetitio', 'deletio', 'detractio', 'adiectio', 'transmutatio', and
'substitutio' (1999: 275). Repetitio refers to a strategy whereby the source text material
is transferred to the target text as it is, whether it be language, picture or typography.
Kaindl mentions that transferring pictures from the original comic in an identical form
is very rare for reasons of publishing, making true repetition of the original pictures
equally rare. Clinging to minor changes in the size, shade and other aspects of visual
elements (for example sound effects) that are otherwise unchanged narrows down the
meaning of repetitio unduly, however, and may even render the term practically useless
in this study. Thus, repetitio here refers to sound effects that have not experienced any
editing during the translation process, even if they are not exactly identical to the
original in size and shade.
Deletio refers to removing text or pictures. Its meaning is close to that of detractio, a
strategy in which “parts of linguistic/pictorial/typographic elements are cut in the
translation” (ibid.: 277). In detractio, such visual material as violence can be cut out for
28
reasons of censorship, for instance. The difference between between deletio and
detractio seems slightly obscure, at least in Kaindl's description, but since it is not
relevant for the purposes of this thesis, the term deletio is used to cover all instances
where something has been removed.
Adiectio, on the other hand, is the opposite of deletio and detractio: elements not found
in the original version are added into the translation, and they supplement the source
material or replace parts of it. Many changes fall under this category. Kaindl presents a
string of examples of adiectio. A good example is colouring black-and-white comics for
the new target audience. A rather drastic example comes from a Dutch Donald Duck,
where the character Ludwig von Drake is replaced with Donald Duck, an obvious
favourite of the Dutch audience (ibid.: 279). This example resembles the previously
mentioned case of Groucho Marx described in Celotti (2008), though its motive was
financial and it did not involve re-drawing a whole character in every single picture.
Further, images can be replaced with text, a practice also familiar from Finnish Donald
Duck magazines in the form of texts summarising previous events of the story. Such a
strategy and its opposite of replacing text with picture are listed by Kaindl as forms of
adiectio. Yet another modification that, according to Kaindl, falls into this category is
found in a highly modified German version of Astérix et les Goths. In the original
French version, the typography of different peoples' speech is determined by nationality,
whereas the German version uses the colour of the fonts to indicate a character's
political orientation.
The meaning of adiectio appears to overlap with what Kaindl terms substitutio.
According to Kaindl, substitutio involves replacing the original material, whether it be
linguistic, typographical or pictorial, with other similar material. An example is again
found in a German translation of Astérix: the original Gaulish village has been
transferred to Germany and the comic even shows the country's division into East and
West Germany on a symbolic level by the means of a wall dividing the village into two
(1999: 283). However, it is difficult to see how this example differs from the examples
illustrating the second meaning of adiectio, with adiectio involving not only additions
but changes. Therefore, I would suggest that adiectio is best defined as additions, while
substitutio covers all substitutions.
29
Lastly, transmutatio involves changing the order or location of the different elements of
the original material in the localised comic (ibid.: 281). Texts about items for sale and
their prices, for example, can be placed in different parts of a panel. Manga, too,
provides good examples of the transmutatio strategy. Because Japanese is read from
right to left, the comics are sometimes transferred to the western target cultures in a
reversed form. The panels are not individually reordered but the whole page is mirrored,
resulting in left-handed people becoming right-handed and vice versa, for example. The
way sound effects are placed in the pictures is also changed sometimes; unlike manga,
the western tradition does not routinely enclose sounds originating from inanimate
objects inside speech balloons.
These categories partially overlap with other descriptions of translation strategies in
comics. Celotti mentions the following six strategies for translating linguistic paratext
(i.e. text as a part of a picture, see section 2.2): translation, translation and insertion of a
footnote in the gutter, cultural adaptation, leaving untranslated, deletion, and a mix of
(some of) the above (2008: 39). These strategies are perhaps best examined through a
comparison with Kaindl's typology because there are notable parallels between the two,
as shown in Table 1.
Kaindl's translation procedures Celotti's strategies of translation
repetitio
leaving untranslated
deletio
deletion
detractio
≈ deletion
adiectio
translation and insertion of a footnote in
the gutter
transmutatio
-
substitutio
≈ cultural adaptation
-
translation
-
mix of (some of) the above
Table 1: Comparison of Kaindl's and Celotti's translation strategies for comics
30
Kaindl's repetitio, or repeating source text material in its original form, clearly
corresponds with Celotti's idea of leaving the linguistic material untranslated. Likewise,
deletio is the more or less direct equivalent of deletion (as is detractio with its rather
similar meaning). With substitio, however, the comparison becomes slightly more
difficult. If the original material is substituted with something from the target culture, as
in the Astérix example above, it involves cultural adaptation. Because Kaindl's division
does not include a separate category for simply “translating”, it is possible to argue that
on a solely linguistic level substitutio could sometimes mean translation, or, in other
words, replacing linguistic material with somewhat equivalent linguistic material in a
different language. The term best left for other purposes, however. Substitio refers to
many more different types of changes than any of Celotti's categories partially
overlapping with it.
As can be seen from Table 1, adiectio is harder to equate with Celotti's strategies of
translation. As substitutio, it covers a range of changes on both linguistic and pictorial
levels. Because of this, some of the changes cannot be described with Celotti's
translation strategies for linguistic paratext ('inscriptions' in Kaindl's terminology). For
example, replacing pictures with words or the other way round is hardly possible with
linguistic paratext – except for a few hypothetical cases such as replacing swear words
with grawlixes or vice versa. While it does not cover the whole range of changes, the
strategy of translating and adding explanatory footnotes does fall into this category.
Transmutatio does not have an equivalent in Celotti's division. With Celotti's division
applied only to linguistic paratext, in other words to linguistic material outside speech
balloons, and in practice only to some words at a time, transmutatio lacks a
corresponding category. Some examples of transmutatio can be applied to a series of
pieces of linguistic paratext, but as transmutatio is about changing the order of various
parts of the material, it cannot be applied to single, isolated occurrences of linguistic
paratext. A category corresponding to transmutatio could be added to the list only if
Celotti's strategies of translating linguistic paratext were meant to be applied to several
occurrences of paratext at a time.
Celotti's strategy of 'translation' and the 'mix' of strategies are left without equivalent in
Kaindl's description. Kaindl does mention that translated or localised comics use a mix
31
of the strategies in his list, and the difference really is more about whether or not the
mixing of strategies is considered a translation strategy in its own right. While both state
the same fact, further analysis is hardly necessary. Celotti's strategy of 'translation',
however, may be more problematic. It is such a comprehensive term that it is hard to
separate from other strategies applied on a linguistic level – it could even cover most of
the other categories, except for repetitio. The 'translation' and 'mix' strategies need not
be problematised any further, however.
Celotti's list is applicable to many forms of translation in general. Valero Garcés, among
others, also talks about strategies in the translation of text in comics. Concerning
problems arising from the type of comic and the treatment of language in it, she
mentions such strategies as domesticating and adapting certain details to the new
sociocultural environment and omitting details of the source culture, such as names of
places and people, when they are not familiar to the target audience (2000: 79-80).
These strategies are, of course, common to all translation, and even though they are as
central in the translation of comics as in any other type of translation, a more detailed
discussion on them is not necessary in this context.
4 Sound effects
After describing the basic features of comics and their translation, the third major theme
of this thesis, sound effects, is discussed. Because they are examined in the case study
of sound effects in seven comics from two angles – when and how they are translated,
what kinds of similarities can be found in effects of similar meaning, and, further, if the
certain similar structures found carry certain meanings in sound effects – it is necessary
to elaborate on the concept of sound effects. Firstly, some factors affecting the
appearance of sound effects are examined, and secondly, sound effects are discussed
more generally.
4.1 Onomatopoeia and sound symbolism
Onomatopoeia is a phenomenon that is often associated with comics and is indeed quite
visibly present in a great amount of them. Simply put, onomatopoeia is “the formation
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of words whose sound is imitative of the sound of the noise or action designated, such
as hiss, buzz, and bang” or “the use of such words for poetic or rhetorical effect” (MOT
Collins English Dictionary 2.0, 2006). While webcomics can express themselves
through means inaccessible to the traditional comic, such as hyperlinks, animation and
even audible sound effects, the traditional comics format is solely based on static visual
imagery and writing. Onomatopoeia provides comics with a way of expressing
unarticulated sounds of the surrounding world in writing and widens the range of means
of expression in comics. A related term is 'sound symbolism', whereby certain sounds in
the phonetic system of a language symbolise and denote certain sounds and actions of
the natural world.
There are several ways to classify onomatopoeia. A difference can be made between
lexical and non-lexical onomatopoeia, as suggested by Attridge (2004). Lexical
onomatopoeia refers to more or less established words that have sound-imitating
characteristics, for example “hiss” and “bang”, while non-lexical onomatopoeia creates
more temporary constructions using the sounds that the human vocal tract is able to
produce and the letters that a language has to offer to imitate non-human sounds as
closely as possible, for instance “skee skee” for the sound of bats and “pfft” for a gun
with a suppressor. Both types of onomatopoeia are present in comics and treated as
onomatopoeia in the material analysed in this thesis.
A further division is suggested by Bredin (1996). The division is unnecessarily detailed
for the purposes of this study, but it provides more insight into how onomatopoeia and
sound effects work and how they are created. Bredin divides onomatopoeia into three
categories:
direct
onomatopoeia,
associative
onomatopoeia
and
exemplary
onomatopoeia (ibid.: 558-564). Direct onomatopoeia encompasses the most obvious
kinds of onomatopoeia, namely those words which attempt to imitate the sounds they
are denoting. This category contains such words as 'hiss', 'zoom', 'buzz' and 'bang'.
However, on closer scrutiny, they may not always match exactly with the sounds they
are denoting. Bredin points out that even despite their relative similarity, they are a
matter of linguistic convention and their onomatopoeic quality is more a matter of
perception. The variety of ways in which the same sound can be imitated in different
languages throughout the globe also goes to show that even the formulation of
onomatopoeic words is a matter of convention, although great similarities are possible.
33
In Finnish, the hissing sound 'suhina' and the groaning sound 'ähinä' serve as examples
of direct onomatopoeia.
In associative onomatopoeia, the onomatopoeic word is not directly conveying the
sound that it refers to but, instead, depicts a sound closely associated with the
denotation. Examples of this include 'cuckoo' and 'whip', neither of which sounds like
the object itself. 'Cuckoo' mimics birdsong, and 'whip' is the noise made by an inanimate
object when moved in a certain manner. These, as many words that display direct
onomatopoeia, can be lexical onomatopoeia in the English language. Finnish examples
are 'huuhkaja' ('eagle-owl') and pörriäinen' (a type of buzzing insect).
Exemplary onomatopoeia is slightly more abstract. Exemplary expressions are
onomatopoeic through the way they are articulated. The way the face muscles work
during pronunciation and the types of sounds produced affect the impression that the
word gives. Stopped consonants add speed and sharpness to the word, while other
words can be pronounced more sluggishly because of their less aggressive phonetic
formulation. These different traits are exemplified by 'dart' and 'sluggish', respectively.
In Finnish, 'kiitää' and 'lyllertää' depict certain kinds of fast and slow movement. This
group can also be found in comics in prominent roles. To some extent, it also serves as
background for sound symbolism.
For example, the sharp and speedy stopped consonants mentioned by Bredin (ibid.) are
partially the types of sound qualities that have been studied in the context of sound
symbolism. 'Sound symbolism' or 'phonosemantics' is another concept within which
particular sounds or phonemes are associated with particular traits, but unlike in
onomatopoeia, the words do not have to be imitative. The idea of sound symbolism
involves the argument that word formation is not arbitrary but, instead, at least partly
controlled by certain, universally appearing associations. Biologist V. S. Ramachandran
(2004) describes a clear example of universal sound symbolism. An experiment which
yields consistent results regardless of culture, language and literacy involves
connecting, among others, the made-up words 'kiki' and 'bouba' with a jagged or a
bulbous, amoeboid shape. Almost every test subject connects 'kiki' with the jagged
shape and 'bouba' with a bulbous shape. Ramachandran argues that this phenomenon,
34
namely sound symbolism, is essentially a form of synaesthesia: the brain creates a link
between the separate senses and separate systems based on a perceived common feature
of jaggedness or undulation, and the reason for the phenomenon stems from a
neurological basis. Interestingly, balloons and typography, discussed above in section
2.2, seem to make use of the very same synaesthetic mechanism.
Sound symbolism probably plays a considerable role in the formation of sound effects.
Table 2 and Table 3 below show some sounds or combinations of letters and the
associations they can carry in English, though they do not necessarily always do so
(Bloomfield, 1933, with examples added, cited in Abelin 1999: 32; and Rhodes, 1994:
276-278). The lists are by no means exhaustive and represent only a sample of the
original collections of symbols. They have not been compiled from sound effects in
particular but show how certain characteristics of words in general can carry certain
meanings. The lists in Tables 2 and 3 have here been abridged to include only the
aspects potentially relevant to sound effects.
Sound
Association
Example
skr-
grating impact or sound
screech
sn-
breath-noise
quick separation or movement
creep
snigger
snatch
sneak
kr-
noisy impact
crash
b-
dull impact
bump
dʒ-
movement up and down
jump
fl-
movement in air
fly
Table 2: Some sound symbols in English according to Bloomfield (1933) (cited in
Abelin 1999:32) (examples added by me)
35
Sound
Association (type of
action, sound etc.)
Example
dr-/tr-
liquid
drink, drain, trickle, trough
tr-/dr-
simple
track, trip, drive, drag
p-/b-
“anchored”
push, pop, bump, bounce
j-/tʃ-
short
jerk, jiggle, jagged, chop
w-
back and forth
wag, wiggle, wobble
p-
abrupt onset
pop, ping, peep
b-
abrupt, loud onset
boom, bang, beep
bl-
loud, air-induced sound
blat, blast, blab
kl-
abrupt onset
clank, click, clip, clop
r-
irregular onset
rip, roar, roll
y-
loud, vocal tract noise
yell, yap, yak
θ-
low pitch, slow onset
thump, thud
pl-
abrupt onset
plink, plop, plunk
kr-
abrupt onset
creak, crack, crunch
tʃ-
irregular onset
chirp, cheep, chatter
w-
poorly resolvable onset
whiz, whack, wham
z-
poorly resolvable onset
zip, zing, zap, zoom
dr-
liquid
drip, drain, drop, drizzle
sl-
liquid
slop, slush
fl-
liquid
flow, flush, flood
m-
liquid
mud, mush, mire, marsh
Table 3: Some sound symbols in English according to Rhodes (1994: 276-278)
Many of the findings in Table 3 can be summarised as follows: words associated with
liquids often contain one of the sounds [dr-], [tr-], [sl-], [fl-] and [m-]; actions with an
abrupt onset often contain [p-], [b-], [kl-], [pl-] or [kr-]; and words of actions with more
difficultly defined onset can contain [r-], [tʃ-], [w-] or [z]. Oswalt (1994: 297) observes
that with consonants, the distributional patterns of obstruents (stops, affricatives and
fricatives) and resonants (nasals, liquids and glides) are very different. He also notes
that stops represent short, abrupt sounds because of their phonetic properties, while
fricatives are often involved in meanings which involve abrasion and air, which is also
visible in Rhodes' list of sound symbols in English. Further, more detailed studies have
been made on sound symbols, but only these distinct sounds and combinations of
sounds as sound symbols are compared with the sound effects of my corpus. The sound
36
symbols above have been studied as the initial sounds of a word, but I am examining
even their distribution in other locations within the sound effects of my corpus to see if
their meaning can remain the same in different locations.
Similar sound symbolism and sound symbols exist in Finnish. Leskinen (1991: 355)
writes that [r] and [h] are especially expressive sounds in Finnish, too. The sound [r] is
good for depicting tremor and interrupted sound, while [h] is well suited for sounds
involving friction. Nasal consonants and [l] are popular in the beginning and in the
middle of imitative words. According to Leskinen (ibid.), front vowels usually denote
high-pitched sounds and back vowels low. Closed vowels are apparently often
considered to be quieter than open ones, while labial vowels are used for strong, dark
sounds.
These sets of sounds, in a way, compare to morphemes (“minimal meaning carrying
unit[s]” (Abelin, 1999: 5)). While “thump”, for instance, might be analysed as a single
morpheme, it is possible to separate the sound [θ] (carrying the meaning of “low pitch,
slow onset”) as a 'phonestheme', a phoneme or group of phonemes shared by words
associated with each other in meaning but not necessarily in etymology (ibid.: 4). The
reasons for not calling phonesthemes morphemes include the fact that phonesthemes
cannot occur alone and that they leave behind incomplete morphemes ('restmorphs')
when extracted from the words they are a part of – contrasted with removing the plural
-s from 'cats', for example (ibid.: 4-6). In addition, phonesthemes probably are not
known and understood as thoroughly and there remains too much fuzziness about the
concept.
The reason why onomatopoeia and sound symbolism are examined here in such detail
in conjunction with comics is that they play an important role in the formation of sound
effects and serve as a part of the written soundtrack of comics. Sound effects resort to
onomatopoeia for obvious reasons: ordinary words may not be enough for expressing
sounds that the human vocal tract is unable to reproduce, and the writing system lacks
the means of putting the sounds into writing without processing them through a
language's sound system first. To summarise, onomatopoeic expressions can be well37
established and generally known or invented solely for the purposes of a particular
sound in a particular context. Whether or not the different onomatopoeia and sound
effects are permanent expressions or temporary constructions, there appear to be some
regularities in how the sound effects are formed, with their formation relying partially
on the use of phonesthemes and sound symbols.
4.2 Sound effects
English is quite a productive language when it comes to sound effects. The same words
can function as verbs, nouns and sound effects if they denote certain kinds of
happenings and actions. Consider, for example, the word 'thump', for which the MOT
Collins English Dictionary 3.0 (2009) gives the following:
thump (θʌmp)
▷n
1 the sound of a heavy solid body hitting or pounding a comparatively soft surface
2 a heavy blow with the hand: he gave me a thump on the back
▷ vb
3 (tr) to strike or beat heavily; pound
4 (intr) to throb, beat, or pound violently: his heart thumped with excitement
> 'thumper n
● ETYMOLOGY C16: related to Icelandic, Swedish dialect dumpa to thump; see THUD, BUMP
Another dictionary, MOT Collins Compact Thesaurus (1999), provides the following
entry, focusing on synonyms:
■ thump noun
1 = thud, bang, clunk, crash, thwack
2 = blow, clout (informal), knock, punch, rap, smack, swipe, wallop (informal), whack
■ verb
3 = thud, bang, crash, thwack
4 = strike, batter, beat, belabour, clobber (slang), clout (informal), hit, knock, pound, punch, rap,
smack, swipe, thrash, wallop (informal), whack
5 = throb, beat
Firstly, the entries show that the word exists both as a verb and a noun and that the other
meaning of the noun 'thump' is a very specific, identifiable “sound” (that of “a heavy
solid body hitting or pounding a comparatively soft surface”), effectively leading to the
fact that it is used as a sound effect. Secondly, a great number of synonyms share similar
properties, in other words, are flexibly used as verbs, nouns or sound effects. Table 4
38
shows some of the synonyms, all of which can be used as nouns, verbs or sound effects.
Many of the words are cited as having an “imitative origin”, according to The Concise
Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology (1996) – in other words, they are
onomatopoeic to a degree.
39
Word
Meaning (relevant meanings, according to MOT Collins English
Dictionary 3.0, 2009)
thud
▷n
1 a dull heavy sound: the book fell to the ground with a thud
2 a blow or fall that causes such a sound
▷ vb, thuds, thudding, thudded
3 to make or cause to make such a sound
bang
▷n
1 a short loud explosive noise, as of the bursting of a balloon or the
report of a gun
2 a hard blow or knock, esp a noisy one; thump: he gave the ball a bang
3 informal a startling or sudden effect: he realized with a bang that he
was late
▷ vb
8 to hit or knock, esp with a loud noise; bump: to bang one's head
9 to move noisily or clumsily: to bang about the house
10 to close (a door, window, etc) or (of a door, etc) be closed noisily;
slam
11 (tr) to cause to move by hitting vigorously: he banged the ball over
the fence
12 to make or cause to make a loud noise, as of an explosion
▷ adv
19 with a sudden impact or effect: bang went his hopes of winning; the
car drove bang into a lamp-post
clunk
▷n
1 a blow or the sound of a blow
2 a dull metallic sound
▷ vb
5 to make or cause to make such a sound
crash
▷ vb
1 to make or cause to make a loud noise as of solid objects smashing or
clattering
2 to fall or cause to fall with force, breaking in pieces with a loud noise
as of solid objects smashing
3 (intr) to break or smash in pieces with a loud noise
4 (intr) to collapse or fail suddenly: this business is sure to crash
▷n
12 an act or instance of breaking and falling to pieces
13 a sudden loud noise: the crash of thunder
14 a collision, as between vehicles
thwack
▷ vb
1 to beat, hit, or flog, esp with something flat
▷n
2 [a] a blow with something flat [b] the sound made by it
▷ interj
3 an exclamation imitative of this sound
Table 4: Synonyms of 'thump'
40
As demonstrated above, even a brief look into the word 'thump' shows that it is a
flexible word that crosses the boundaries between different word classes and that many
of the words associated with it share similar properties. The numerous synonyms of
'thump' show that words exhibiting this type of productivity may tend to form clusters
with words of similar meanings and properties. It is likely that clusters are formed
around specific types of meanings and actions, such as more or less solid objects
colliding or hitting each other or actions involving water or other wet materials or
objects, in other words, actions with distinctive sounds.
Because drawing a line between onomatopoeic expressions and other types of sound
effects can be difficult, this study focuses on sound effects in general, considering even
elements that, while perhaps including some sound symbolism, are not strictly speaking
onomatopoeic because they do not attempt to describe an actual sound. Again, for the
purposes of narrowing down the subject of this study, sound effects within speech
balloons containing both dialogue and sound effects are excluded from the analysis
because they may be used as parts of the dialogue, for example when a character is
deliberately disguising their words as a cough. Sound effects enclosed within their own
balloons, on the other hand, are treated in the same way as sound effects outside
perigrams since they are clearly separated from the rest of the text.
The exact definition of a 'sound effect' can be debated, too. While such sound effects as
“BOOM” or “BLAM” are clearly onomatopoeic and imitate sound, other written effects
can comprise elements only explaining or dramatising an action. Examples of these
include “LEAP!” and “POING (of doom)”, the first of which, interestingly, includes an
exclamation mark even though it is not a “sound” as such, and the second of which uses
smaller, lower-case letters in parenthesis to specify the mood of the action of jumping
(examples from the Sluggy Freelance websites 1 (2004) & 2 (2003)). At least nonacademic sources have noted this difference, using, for example, the term 'unsound
effect' to describe the phenomenon (TV Tropes website). The very use of the term
'unsound effect' shows the close connection between these explanatory elements and
actual sound effects. Similarly, because of sound symbolism, the use of effects derived
from such verbs as 'kick' may create an impression of onomatopoeia even if it has not
been the original intention of the author of the comic.
41
For the purposes of this thesis, it is not necessary to define the term 'sound effect' in its
strictest sense. The boundary between an effect mimicking sound and an effect
specifying an action is hazy at best – most likely based on hunch or personal preference
rather than absolute, measurable attributes – and the different types of effects would
perhaps best be described through the notion of continuum rather than that of
polarisation. In one sense, it makes little difference to a translator where a particular
effect is located on the sound–explanation continuum: it is text and a decision on if and
how it is to be translated has to be made individually in each case. To avoid confusion
and problems of definition, even unsound effects are here treated as sound effects as
long as they are in writing. In this thesis, the potentially problematic grawlixes are
treated as dialogue, and possible differences between the original and the translated
versions are not examined in this context.
5 A case study of seven comics and their translations
5.1 Material, methods and hypothesis
The corpus used in this study comprises a collection of sound effects in individual
stories or strips from seven different comics. The comics included in this study are
chosen from different genres in order to gain a better insight into what kinds of trends
and differences are visible in the translation of sound effects in different comics. The
assumption is that different genres have their own conventions which have been formed
for various reasons, such as financial issues, different schedules, differences in
audiences, quality control, and the degree of integration of the sound effects with the
visual content. As the comics included in the corpus vary significantly in length, only a
relevant amount of sound effects from each comic is analysed to avoid unnecessary
repetition. Though the corpus covers several genres, humorous comics comprise most of
it in order to gain a more comprehensive view of the particular genre and uncover
possible differences within it.
The corpus comprises sound effects from two Donald Duck stories by Don Rosa, one
Duck story and its two translations from Carl Barks, a random sample of Peanuts strips
by Charles M. Schulz, a collection of Calvin and Hobbes strips and several of their
42
translations from Bill Watterson, a part of an album of Batman by Frank Miller and
David Mazzucchelli, and a part of a longer story Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave
Gibbons. For the sake of clarity, these comics and their albums, publishers, and creators
are collected into Table 5 and the corresponding facts about the translations are gathered
into Table 6. Several translations of some of the comics have been examined, in which
case all the relevant details are included. The publishers and dates are based on the
edition I have used as material in this corpus, not on the first publication, which
explains why some of the translations appear to be older than the English comics. With
Peanuts, no publisher or year is given for the English comic because the material used
here is not from the original album.
Comic or story
Album
Publisher, year of
publishing
Artist(s)
The Secret of Atlantis Walt Disney's Uncle
Gladstone, 1996
$crooge Adventures 5:
The Secret of Atlantis
Carl Barks
Dreamtime Duck of
the Never-Never
The Life and Times of
Scrooge McDuck:
Volume Two
BOOM! Studios,
2010
Don Rosa
The Cowboy Captain The Life and Times of
of the Cutty Sark
Scrooge McDuck
Companion
Gemstone
Publishing, 2006
Don Rosa
Peanuts
The Complete Peanuts
1950-1952
Charles M.
Schulz
Calvin and Hobbes
The Days Are Just
Packed
Time Warner
Paperbacks, 2004
Bill Watterson
Batman
Batman: Year One
DC Comics, 2005
Frank Miller
(writer),
David
Mazzucchelli
(illustrator)
Watchmen
Watchmen
DC Comics, 2008
Alan Moore
(writer),
Dave Gibbons
(illustrator)
Table 5: English-language source texts in the corpus
43
Original
Translation
The Secret of Atlantiksen
Atlantis
arvoitus
Album or
magazine
Publisher, year of Translator
publishing
Aku Ankan
juhlasarjat 5
Helsinki Media
Markku
Company Oy, 1995 Saarinen
Aku Ankka
Sanoma Magazines unknown
Finland Oy, 2012
Roope Ankan
elämä ja teot
Sanoma Magazines Markku
Finland Oy, 2005 Saarinen
Dreamtime
Duck of the
Never-Never
Uniajan urho
The Cowboy
Captain of
the Cutty
Sark
Cutty Sarkin
Roope Ankan
cowboykapteeni elämä ja teot 2:
Kaikki
lisäseikkailut
Peanuts
Tenavat
Täydelliset Tenavat Egmont Kustannus, Juhani
1950–1952
2007
Tolvanen
Calvin and
Hobbes
Lassi ja Leevi
Lassi ja Leevi:
Juhlakirja 5.
Kustannus Oy
Semic, 1996
Juhani Valli
Lassi ja Leevi
Lassi ja Leevi:
Kustannus Oy
Kovaa ja korkealta Semic, 1995
Juhani Valli
Lassi ja Leevi
Lassi ja Leevi:
Valon nopeudella
Juhani Valli
Batman
Batman
Batman:
Egmont Kustannus, Riku Perälä
Ensimmäinen vuosi 2007
Watchmen
Vartijat
Vartijat
Sanoma Magazines Jukka
Finland Oy, 2007 Lindfors
Kustannus Oy
Semic, 1995
Egmont Kustannus, Jouko
2009
Ruokosenmäki
Table 6: Finnish translations in the corpus
The creators and their stories deserve to be introduced in more detail that can fit a table,
however. The Donald Duck comics from Carl Barks and Don Rosa were chosen for this
corpus because of the special status they have established among Finnish audiences.
Older audiences have grown up with the comics of the former Duck creator, while
Rosa's comics appeal to a younger audience, but both are equally established even
among the casual Finnish readers of comics. They represent a popular and wide-spread
comic which has been considered so important that it has become the subject of
exceptionally conscientious translation. In addition, they differ from many of the other
humorous comics in that they have not originally been published nor been meant to be
published as newspaper strips.
44
Carl Barks (March 27, 1901 – August 25, 2000) was a prolific maker of Donald Duck
comics responsible for creating the fictional city of Duckburg (Ankkalinna) and many of
its residents, including the central figures of Scrooge McDuck (Roope Ankka),
Gladstone Gander (Hannu Hanhi) and Gyro Gearloose (Pelle Peloton), among others.
The American started working for Disney Studios in 1936 and wrote his first Duck
stories some time after that, but one of his first big hits, Christmas on Bear Mountain
(Joulu Karhuvuorella) – introducing the character of Scrooge McDuck – was published
in 1947 (Lambiek website 2, 2012). After this story, longer and more popular stories
followed. The artist behind the comics was, however, kept anonymous at the time, and
readers recognising Barks’ style started referring to him as “the Good Duck Artist”. The
anonymity was eventually lifted in 1970 through some detective work, and Barks began
receiving the recognition he deserved (ibid.). Barks continued with Ducks even after his
retirement in late 1960s, writing scripts for comics and doing Duck-themed oil paintings
(ibid.).
The story chosen for analysis from Carl Barks is the classic The Secret of Atlantis
(Atlantiksen arvoitus) from 1954, henceforth referred to as DDB. Sound effects are not
very numerous in this particular story, but two different Finnish translations are
examined: a translation by Markku Saarinen published in the collection Aku Ankan
juhlasarjat 5 in 1995 (eds. Kivekäs & Perälä), and a later version published in the
weekly magazine Aku Ankka (or “AA” for short) in 2012 (No. 1). The two versions of
the story represent different forms of publication. The story is an old classic, however,
which means that there may be other translations of it, too. They can be assumed to owe
something to the previous translations, and similarities are likely to occur. One
noteworthy fact about the translations is that, in the album, the translator is mentioned
but no translator is named in the weekly AA. Aku Ankka (2013: 2) sheds some light on
how AA is translated and explains why no names are given. Practically all of the
translation is done by a group of about ten freelance translators, and the group varies
depending on how each translator is available at a particular time. The translation
process does not end with the translators' contribution, however. The translations are
reworked by the editors, who harmonise the texts of up to four translators per magazine
and process them to create a coherent style for the finished magazine. Creating and
finalising the texts takes weeks, and there are so many people involved at different
stages that the magazine prefers not to attribute the Finnish text – no longer strictly even
45
a translation, according to the editorial staff – to a single person.
Don Rosa (born Keno Don Hugo Rosa, June 29, 1951 –), another American Duck artist,
started drawing and writing Duck stories for Disney in 1987, beginning with the story
The Son of the Sun. He is often characterised as the successor of Carl Barks’ work. Not
only is the quality of his work high both visually and story-wise, but, having grown up
with Carl Barks’ comics, he also consciously continues in Carl Barks’ footsteps, setting
his stories in the same era as Barks, using Barks' characters in his stories (with some
exceptions such as Arpin Lusène/Le Chevalier Noir (Musta ritari)), writing sequels to
Barks' stories, and paying him homage by hiding the acronym D.U.C.K. (“Dedicated to
Uncle Carl from Keno”) into the opening panels and covers of stories (Rosa, 2005: 6).
The stories by Rosa chosen into this corpus are from the compilations The Life and
Times of Scrooge McDuck (Roope Ankan elämä ja teot) and The Life and Times of
Scrooge McDuck Companion (Roope Ankan elämä ja teot 2: Kaikki lisäseikkailut),
which, as the names implies, are mainly about the character Scrooge McDuck and his
exploits in varying settings around the world during his youth. While Don Rosa is
popular in Europe and extremely popular in Finland, his works are not as easy to find in
their original language in Finland. These particular sets of stories, however, have gained
popularity in the United States as well and were easier to find as English versions,
which is why they were included in the corpus. The first story examined here is
Dreamtime Duck of the Never-Never (Uniajan urho) from The Life and Times, referred
to as DDR1 in this thesis. The second story is from The Life and Times Companion, a
story called The Cowboy Captain of the Cutty Sark (Cutty Sarkin cowboykapteeni). The
second Rosa story is referred to as DDR2.
The English version of DDR1 was originally published in 1995. The Finnish Roope
Ankan elämä ja teot used in this thesis is the third edition, printed in 2005, and the story
Uniajan urho is a translation by Markku Saarinen (though, interestingly enough, all the
other comics in the album have been translated by Jukka Lindfors). In other words, both
Atlantiksen arvoitus and Uniajan urho are made by the same translator. Cutty Sarkin
cowboykapteeni, on the other hand, is translated by Jukka Lindfors, who regularly
translates Rosa's comics.
46
Peanuts (Tenavat), another popular comic examined in this thesis, was created by
Charles Monroe Schulz (November 26, 1922 – February 12, 2000). The long-lived strip
comic ran for fifty years from 1950 onwards and is still frequently reprinted. The last
Sunday strip of the Peanuts comic famously came out one day after the artist’s death.
The comic has featured such familiar characters as Charlie Brown (Jaska Jokunen) and
Snoopy (Ressu) right from the beginning, though the cast of characters has changed and
developed somewhat during the series. Peanuts is later abbreviated as PEA.
Like the Duck comics, Peanuts has been a very popular comic, but the popularity is
more evenly distributed than that of the Duck: audiences around the globe probably
appreciate Peanuts more and more evenly than the Ducks, which are very popular in
Finland and, in general, more popular in Europe than in America. Another difference is
the fact that Peanuts was originally published as strips which were collected into
albums later. Strictly speaking, the stories in The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck
and The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck Companion have been collected into
albums after first having been published as individual stories in separate magazines, but
the Duck stories are considerably longer and have more continuity in that sense.
Nonetheless, Peanuts represents a popular, internationally acclaimed humorous strip
comic which was originally published in newspapers.
The strips examined here are a random sample from 1950-1952, the very first years of
the Peanuts. The Finnish album from 2007 is Täydelliset Tenavat 1950–1952, translated
by Juhani Tolvanen. It is a translation of a book belonging to the series called The
Complete Peanuts. The series of albums contains all Peanuts strips in chronological
order, but only the first two albums were ever published in Finnish. However, due to a
very limited availability of the English originals in Finnish libraries, the English strips
are collected from various sites around the Internet (Peanuts websites 1 & 2; it is not
known if the sites have permission to use the copyrighted comics). The Englishlanguage strips are used as the starting point of the analysis of PEA.
Like Peanuts, the Calvin and Hobbes comic, later abbreviated as C&H, represents a
popular strip comic. Created by William Boyd Watterson II (July 5, 1958 –), or more
familiarly Bill Watterson, the series was not as long-running but has remained popular
long after its first appearance in 1985 and continues being re-printed today. The comic
47
was discontinued by Watterson in 1995 in order to keep it from becoming repetitive and
wearing out its ideas. Some of the escapades of a boy and his toy tiger are introduced in
the album The Days Are Just Packed from 1993, a collection of regular and Sunday
strips. The album has been translated as Lassi ja Leevi: Juhlakirja 5 which is included
in my corpus. A further comparison is made with the albums Lassi ja Leevi: Kovaa ja
korkealta and Lassi ja Leevi: Valon nopeudella. The former contains only Sunday strips,
which are bigger in size, while the latter contains the single-row strips that were
originally published on weekdays. In practice, this means that three different versions of
each strip are examined. All of the albums have been translated by the same person,
Juhani Valli. Though the compilation album is longer, only pages 7-110 of the album
The Days Are Just Packed are included in the corpus of this thesis in order to keep the
amount of sound effects from this comic reasonable. The corresponding parts of the
albums Lassi ja Leevi: Kovaa ja korkealta (pp. 17-42) and Lassi ja Leevi: Valon
nopeudella (pp. 13-46) are included. With four albums to compare, this corpus contains
more sound effects from Calvin and Hobbes than from the other comics.
Differing greatly from humorous comics, the superhero genre deserves attention in the
context of sound effects. After the creation and popular approval of Superman in 1938,
the genre began to spawn such well-known superhero characters as Spider-Man and
Batman, with the publishers Marvel Comics and DC Comics behind most of the
successful superheroes. Because superhero comics contain a lot of action, they need a
lot of sound effects, which is why they are especially interesting to examine. The comic
chosen to represent the genre here is Batman, abbreviated BAT, more specifically
Batman: Year One (2005), created by Frank Miller (writer) and David Mazzucchelli
(illustrator). The examined comic is a compilation because the original comic first came
out as several smaller comic books 1986-1987, and the Finnish version is its translation,
Batman: Ensimmäinen vuosi. The album's translator is Riku Perälä. Again, to avoid
unnecessary repetition, only the first 62 pages are included in the corpus.
Finally, a sample representing more serious type of comics from the domain of graphic
novels is included in the corpus. Watchmen (Vartijat) (or WM for short) was written by
Alan Moore, an eccentric but renowned British writer, and drawn by Dave Gibbons,
also known for his contribution to the comic Green Lantern. Watchmen, which also
originally came out 1986-1987 in twelve separate books, is known as one of the most
48
iconic graphic novels ever published. The story was later collected into a single novel
and also spawned a film by the same name, released in 2009. The Finnish translation
Vartijat is by Jouko Ruokosenmäki, and the translation used as the source here is the
second edition printed in 2009.
The novel is mainly set in the period of the Cold War but depicts an alternative history.
Watchmen is considered a deconstruction of superhero comics. In the comic, different
not-so-exemplary pasts and motives of a collection of former vigilantes, most of them
lacking super powers but in general interested in the business of fighting crime, are
introduced and critically examined while simultaneously analysing the nature of man.
While the comic reflects societal issues of its time, the superhero-like characters in
appropriate costume create a parallel to the superhero genre. From the point of view of
this research, this makes the comic an interesting subject of study: the comic has
similarities with the superhero genre while having been created in an an more serious
vein and possibly for a different type of audience than the traditional superhero comic.
The focus is not primarily on graphic, entertaining violence or action.
The corpus contains the sound effects, their translations, and information on whether
they are contained within a perigram or not. In addition, a difference is made between
two types of texts located outside balloons: those which are simply hanging against a
background of a solid wall of colour and those which are overlapping with pictures in
such a way that translating them would have involved re-drawing, covering or changing
parts of the picture. As already mentioned, the concept of 'sound effect' is here
understood to include everything from clearly onomatopoeic sound effects to 'unsound
effects'. Sound effects in the middle of dialogue are not included in the corpus because
they may be fused with other text quite seamlessly and, thus, be difficult to extract from
other textual material. Effects within their own balloons, however, are included.
The sound effects are analysed from two angles. Firstly, sound effects, their use, and
their translations are compared to find out what kinds of strategies are used in the
translation of different comics and different genres. A modified version of Kaindl's
typology of translation procedures is used to group the findings: repetitio, deletio,
adiectio, transmutatio, substitutio, and straightforward translation (introduced in section
3.3). The effects of a sound effect's location on its translation or non-translation are also
49
examined. Sound effects that are heavily embedded in picture are called 'embedded'
sound effects, and effects outside perigrams but not integrated into the picture are
termed 'loose' sound effects. After examining the individual comics, all of the findings
are summarised and analysed.
Secondly, individual sound effects are examined from the point of view of sound
symbolism. In section 5.3, sound effects from the corpus are categorised and analysed
based on their semantic content and their characteristics are compared mostly with
Bloomfield's (1933) and Rhodes' (1994) examples of sound symbolism (introduced
above in section 4.1) in order to identify phonesthemes in the effects. Bloomfield and
Rhodes describe their sound symbols through such aspects as the direction of an action
or a sound's onset, but the categories in this study arise from repeatedly occurring
themes and events in the sound effects of the corpus.
Bloomfield and Rhodes focus on lexical words. As far as I know, no similar study has
been conducted on sound effects before. It can be assumed that sound effects have more
freedom to break the rules of English spelling because their form can be less solidified.
Consequently, sound effects could be assumed to contain more sound symbolism to
capture the essence of a sound without being bound by orthographic conventions.
However, since many traditional sound effects are identical to a noun and a verb
referring to the same action, the assumption is not as straightforward. I compare my
corpus to the sound symbols that Bloomfield and Rhodes have described and suggest
some additional symbols based on findings from this particular corpus. There are few
Finnish sound symbols with which to compare the sounds and combinations of sounds
in the translated effects of my corpus, so I examine the Finnish effects by comparing
them to the English effects and sound symbols. A comparison with the sound symbols in
English is justified because of the relative universality of sound symbols, while a
comparison between the Finnish and English effects reveals what sounds have been
used in Finnish without interference from the source text.
In this study, the following recurring themes were identified and used as categories:
impact, friction, air current, liquid and food, breakage, explosions and gunshots,
duration, and pitch. Impact, friction, breakage, and explosions and gunshots are themes
that involve a specific type of an action or an event. Air current and liquid sounds are
50
chosen on the basis of the materials involved in the creation of the sound. Duration and
pitch differ from the other categories because they are qualities of the sounds
themselves, but they are nonetheless recurring features in the sounds of the corpus.
There would be various other ways of categorising sound effects, but the categories that
are used here are relevant specifically to the corpus of this study.
The comics examined in this study are aimed at different audiences, have been
published and translated at different times, and are not equally widely-read or
established in Finland and among Finnish readers. These differences are likely to be
reflected on the results of the analysis of the different translation strategies used in the
corpus' translations.
My initial assumption is that there are significant differences in the translation strategies
used in different comics. For instance, one of the stereotypical genres of comics, the
superhero genre, is a potential source of sound effects even in other languages. The
nature of superhero comics affects the way sound effects are used in them: action
sequences traditionally need plenty of loud and showy sound effects. Accordingly, the
visual representation of the sounds may involve large effects that are highly embedded
in the pictures. The initial assumption is, therefore, that sound effects are often not
translated at all because it would be difficult to extract them from the pictorial content
of the comics and place the translations into the picture. Omissions are considered
unlikely. Sound effects specifically placed inside speech balloons, on the other hand, are
more likely to be translated. Today, computers make editing easier, which may result in
older translations retaining more sound effects in their original English form than more
recent translations. However, some genre-specific conventions may have been
established earlier and be adhered to regardless of the improved editing facilities. In
addition, the intended audiences may be credited with enough language skills or
experience in reading comics to understand such foreign-language elements as English
sound effects.
Some assumptions are also made about the translations of the Donald Duck comics. The
popularity of Donald Duck comics has turned them into a kind of an institution in
Finland, especially so in the case of stories created by Carl Barks and Don Rosa. The
Finnish Duck magazine Aku Ankka has cherished the fluency of language throughout its
51
printing history (Aku Ankka, 2013: 2) and has even received recognition for this work.
In 2001, its editorial staff received from the Finnish department of the University of
Helsinki the annual price Kielihelmi, awarded for creative and individual use of the
Finnish language (University of Helsinki website, 2001). Since Aku Ankka values the
quality of language, the comics of the two especially beloved Duck creators can be
expected to have been translated with the greatest amount of care and attention possible.
Therefore, it is expected that the Finnish sound effects exhibit a greater variety of
translation strategies and contain relatively few Anglicisms or traces of the original
language or language form. Again, omissions are considered to be unlikely. The Donald
Duck comics are numerous in the corpus because they are expected to contain more
variation in translation strategies, making them more interesting to study.
Besides the Duck comics, two other humorous comics are represented in the corpus:
Calvin and Hobbes and Peanuts. It is interesting to see how these comics compare to
the Duck comics, but it is hard to make any assumptions about what similarities and
differences there might be. On the other end of the spectrum is Watchmen, the
translation strategies of which are hard speculate on.
5.2 Findings and discussion
5.2.1 Applied translation strategies and factors affecting their usage
This section gives an overview of how sound effects are used in the examined comics
and what general trends are visible in the original versions and their translations. The
humorous comics are introduced first, and the traditional superhero comic Batman is
examined before Watchmen, a comic also viewed as a critique of the superhero genre. In
the following sections, sound effects are compared and contrasted with their
translations. The findings are examined using a modified version of Kaindl's typology
of translation procedures involving repetitio, deletio, adiectio, transmutatio, and
substitutio (see further discussion in section 3.3). The original division lacks a term for
“simply translating”, and the straightforward term 'translation' is used to fill this gap.
Transmutatio is specifically pointed out only when the location of the translated sound
52
effect differs significantly from the original location. The use of transmutatio may, for
example, be motivated by size differences between the effects in the two languages.
Interestingly, the spelling of some sound effects has not been altered in any way but the
sound effects have, nonetheless, been rewritten. This practice has no term in Kaindl's
typology of translation procedures, but for the purposes of this thesis, this type of
reproduction of an expression with a different lettering is regarded as repetitio. Such
cases are specially pointed out, however, as the motivation behind this strategy is not
always clear.
The effects a sound effect's location in a panel on the choice of translation strategy are
also examined. Three locations in which sound effects can occur are identified: inside
speech balloons, outside speech balloons but not in pictures, and in pictures. As
mentioned above, the sound effects that are heavily embedded in picture are here termed
'embedded' sound effects and effects outside balloons but not integrated into the picture
are called 'loose' sound effects. This division is adopted because effects in different
locations are not equally easy to replace with their translations.
For the sake of clarity, examples from the corpus are presented in CAPITAL letters, and
whenever several versions of the same effect are introduced simultaneously, they are
presented in the order ENGLISH EFFECT/FINNISH TRANSLATION/SECOND
FINNISH TRANSLATION. Whenever the effects are not presented in this way, their
language is indicated separately.
5.2.1.1 Peanuts
Peanuts is the oldest comic of the corpus, with the original strips examined dating back
to 1952. As already mentioned, the corpus contains a random sample of Peanuts strips
from 1952 and the comic has the lowest number of examples analysed because of the
limited availability of the original English album. The strips are among the earliest in
the long-lived series, and the vast majority of the sound effects are lexical onomatopoeia
and
other
well-established
AHCHOO!/AATSHII!,
sound
effects.
SLAM!/SLAM!,
Examples
RING!/RING!
include
(for
HIC!/HIK!,
a
doorbell),
QUACK/KVAAK (for a toy duck), CHOMP CHOMP/MUMPS MUMPS (for eating),
53
and *GULP*/*GULP* (for swallowing). Because the comic is presented in strip form,
the themes vary, but the topics and sound effects are often related to children’s lives.
The topics are fairly traditional and related to such everyday actions as eating or
bouncing a ball. In this small sample, there are no obvious unsound effects.
PEA follows certain patterns of marking its sound effects and dialogue texts, typical of
this comic in particular. In the English dialogue, full stops are not used, while
exclamation marks, question marks, and the series of three full stops are common. In the
translation, full stops are added. This may have implications on sound effects as well, as
sound effects within locugrams without a full stop or other punctuation would perhaps
have it added into the Finnish translations, but in this limited sample, all sound effects
within perigrams end with a punctuation mark. Without further samples, it is not
possible to conclude whether this applies to other strips of the album. Capital letters are
used in both language versions in all text. *Asterisks* are sometimes used to mark
sound effects within perigrams both in the original and in the translation.
In the relatively small sample of sound effects from PEA, the strategies of repetitio,
deletio and translation are used, but there are no clear cases of transmutatio and no
cases of adiectio. Repetitio is relatively common, though it is sometimes hard to tell
whether the effects are identical to the original or rewritten with the same orthography.
Sound effects inside speech balloons have been translated more often than not, but most
of the loose sound effects have not been translated. No significant cases of embedded
sound effects were found. On the whole, the translations are fairly traditional and not
very surprising Finnish equivalents of the English effects.
One special case where the translation may have a significant impact on the
interpretation of a comic strip was found in this corpus. It involves deletio or, more
specifically, leaving out a sound effect from the translation. In one Sunday strip, Lucy is
bouncing a ball to break a record, which annoys Charlie Brown greatly because she has
already been “going all week.” The annoying effect is strengthened in the English
version by using repetitive and pervasive sound effects in all panels where Lucy is
bouncing the ball. After all, the continuous sound PAT PAT BUMPETY-BUMP /
BUMPETY-BUMPETY-BUMP-BUMP / BUMPETY-BUMP! BUMPETY-BUMP! /
BUMPETY-BUMPETY-BUMP! / BUMPETY-BUMP (the slash signifies a panel break)
54
most likely is what makes the bouncing so annoying. Charlie Brown throws a basketful
of balls at Lucy to confuse her bouncing and counting and to make her stop, but sound
effects are used only when Lucy is bouncing the ball. However, in the translation, all the
sound effects have been omitted, which leads to losing the annoying effect of the
original. The original sound effects are located in the picture, but they are hanging in
empty air, which means that they would have been easy to replace with Finnish
translations with no need for further editing. The absence of the numerous sound effects
may render the strip incomprehensible to a Finnish reader.
In another case, sound and sound effects are crucial to the joke of the strip. The
translations of both dialogue and sound affect the outcome of how, and if, the joke is
understood. Charlie Brown offers some candy to Lucy and says ”When you're ready for
another piece, just holler.” When Lucy has finished eating the piece she got, she literally
hollers: “YAGHH!” The joke is of course that Lucy takes Charlie's comment more
literally than it was meant to be. The Finnish translation of Charlie's line is “Kerro
sitten, kun tahdot uuden” (which translates as “Tell me when you want another”), and
the holler is “IÄÄÄHH!” in Finnish. Since the Finnish 'kerro' ('tell') does not indicate
why Lucy is shouting as it contains no reference to loudness or shouting, the original
explanation of Lucy's literal interpretation is lost. The strip changes character, and Lucy
could perhaps be regarded as impatient, greedy or annoying in the Finnish version
instead of literal as in the original strip. A better choice of a verb could have been, for
example, 'hihkaista', a word better suited to the situation and with a connotation of highpitched yelling.
5.2.1.2 Calvin and Hobbes
The topics in Calvin and Hobbes range from daily routines and philosophical
discussions to tiger attacks and dinosaurs, or topics concerning the life of a rather
extraordinary six-year-old with a more-dangerous-than-average toy tiger. Similarly to
Peanuts, the fact that the comics came out as separate strips means that the topics can
vary quite significantly, as opposed to longer stories which usually contain longer, more
coherent stories. The sound effects reflect boyish topics, such as playing with food,
playing in the mud, being ambushed by a tiger, and going sledging. Calvin's reactions of
55
disappointments or fear are especially prominent among the effects. In general, there is
more variation in the sound effects in these comic strips than in PEA, which may be
explained by the fact that C&H has the most sound effects in this particular corpus.
C&H also contains the clearest instance of an unsound effect also translated as such:
SHOVE/TYÖNTÖ.
The collection Lassi ja Leevi: Juhlakirja 5 contains exactly the same comics as the
English album The Days Are Just Packed – even the page numbers match. The size of
the albums is almost exactly the same. Both are printed in colour, but the shades differ
slightly, probably for reasons of printing. As already mentioned, the relevant sound
effects are regarded as exactly matching or identical in the two versions of the album
when they are copied from the original version instead of having been redrawn. From
my translation-oriented point of view, slight differences in shade or size are irrelevant
and are ignored in this context.
Repetitio is slightly more common in Juhlakirja than in the other Lassi ja Leevi albums.
No deletio or adiectio takes place in Juhlakirja. In other words, the sound effect
translations are rather faithful to the original in the sense that they do not alter the
original layout and distribution of the sound effects very much. Instead, they rather
straightforwardly either copy or translate the effects. When looking at the distribution of
the different strategies, most of the repetitio takes place inside the pictures, not in the
texts of the balloons. In speech balloons, there is one RRRRGH!! of anger and
frustration which has not been translated in Juhlakirja, otherwise all effects within
perigrams have been translated into Finnish. As the particular effect works quite well in
both languages, this case of repetitio leads to no confusion (thought the solution
GRRR!! in Kovaa ja korkealta is perhaps more idiomatic). In text outside balloons,
repetitio is divided almost equally between embedded and loose sound effects. There
are more cases of repetitio in loose effects than in embedded ones, but loose sound
effects also occur much more frequently in the comic and are notably more often
translated than not. In fact, none of the highly embedded sound effects have been
translated. None of the very visual and highly embedded sound effects are translated in
the smaller albums, either.
One case may be interpreted as either substitutio or transmutatio in C&H. In one strip, a
56
burp lasts for two panels in all versions of the comic. There are differences in how this
has been presented in the original and the translations, however. In English, the effect
starts in the first panel and ends in the second, while in Finnish, the effect ends in the
first panel and is repeated from the beginning in the second. One interpretation is that
the effect has been relocated, which would make it a case of transmutatio. Nonetheless,
I think it is more appropriate to call the strategy substitutio because it involves replacing
the original effect with somewhat but not “identical” material.
The smaller albums Lassi ja Leevi: Valon nopeudella and Lassi ja Leevi: Kovaa ja
korkealta contain some of the same comic strips as The Days Are Just Packed, and the
relevant comics are examined here. The size difference between the English version and
the two Finnish localisations is considerable: the comics in the two separate albums are
smaller, which, in practice, means that the texts differ slightly from the bigger album not
only in content but also in size and layout. The size difference appears to have had some
effect on the translation of sound effects.
As mentioned previously, the album Valon nopeudella contains some of the single-row
comic strips that appear in the collection Lassi ja Leevi: Juhlakirja 5. The non-Sunday
strips are originally drawn in black-and-white so there are no changes in the colouring
of the smaller translated album. However, the Sunday strip album Kovaa ja korkealta is
in black-and-white unlike the original coloured Sunday strips, which appears to have
had some influence on the translation of sound effects. With the colours removed, more
sound effects are translated into Finnish than in Juhlakirja, most of them loose sound
effects. This may be because it is easier to change them when there is no need to recolour the pictures. Even in dialogue and narration, the translations are different in the
big collection and the smaller albums.
In the non-Sunday strips of Valon nopeudella, all sound effects in locugrams are
translated and loose effects are translated as often as in Juhlakirja. In the Sunday strips
of Kovaa ja korkealta, where the coloured comics have been turned black-and-white,
large sound effects in pictures have been both left as they are and translated. Sometimes,
the strategies of repetitio and substitutio are used even within the same panel. Sound
effects in locugrams are translated without exception, and the translation of sound
effects is consistent in the middle of dialogue. Outside dialogue, strategies of both
57
translation and non-translation occur, which may imply that there is some conscious
decision-making behind the different choices.
5.2.1.3 The Secret of Atlantis
As the name implies, The Secret of Atlantis is a story taking place partially in an
underwater environment, and because Scrooge McDuck is involved, it has largely to do
with money. From the point of view of sound effects, some splashing, a lot of clicking
of coins, and a great deal of splashing sounds of a pie fight are involved. There are also
some sounds coming from a radio, but speech and music originating from the radio are
not considered sound effects. Instead, they are comparable to a comic's dialogue and a
part of the overall sound track. Besides these instances, the use of sound effects in DDB
is quite limited. Only 11 of the total of 31 pages contain stand-alone sound effects, and
there are no animal sounds among them (words uttered by the anthropomorphic
protagonists excepted).
As expected, no sound effects have been copied from the original version as a part of
the picture in either Juhlasarjat 5 or AA, but, surprisingly, some of them have not been
translated. The differences in typography show that all of them have been rewritten, but
the English effect may be used if it is acceptable in Finnish. The sound effects,
nonetheless, conform fairly well to Finnish conventions and mostly look like Finnish
even when they have been repeated from the original: TINK!/TINK (in Juhlasarjat),
PLINK!/PLINK (in AA), PLONK!/PLONK/PLONK, RIP!/RIP (in Juhlasarjat), and
PLINK!/PLINK/PLINK are all loose sound effects which repeat the English effect and
its spelling. The identical content is enough in this context to justify calling this practice
repetitio. Otherwise, all other loose sound effects as well as all embedded sound effects
and effects within perigrams have been translated. Nothing has been removed or added,
but there are a few cases of transmutatio: some sound effects originally embedded have
become loose sound effects in the translation. Examples of the translations are collected
into Table 7 to show the type of language otherwise used in the Finnish versions.
58
Depicted action English
Finnish (Juhlasarjat 5)
Finnish (AA)
panting
GASP! GULP!
PANT!
LÄÄH! KLUPS! PHUU! Lääh! Klups! Phuu!
trident piercing
coin bag
CHUNK!
TSUNK
TSUNK
jumping into
water
SPLASH!
MOLSKIS
MOLSK
coin falling
through hat
RIP!
RRITS
RIP
pie fight
SPLAT! SPLOK!
SMACK!
SPLÄTS SPLOTSH
KLÄTS
PLÄTS SPLÄT
SKLÄT
sobbing
SOB!
NYYH!
Nyyh!
Table 7: Examples of sound effects and their translations in The Secret of Atlantis
The two Finnish versions of the story were published 17 years apart, and the older one
has apparently served as a reference point when the updated translation was created.
This is evident in the dialogue, which contains some identical wordings. The same is
possibly visible in the sound effects, but it is hard to tell whether the similarities are
coincidences resulting from, for example, onomatopoeia or whether they are purposeful
reproductions of an earlier translation in the more recent version.
In Juhlasarjat 5, all sound effects are printed in black regardless of their original colour,
whereas in AA, colours are used in the sound effects regularly, with the texts sporting a
black outline as in the English version. There are other systematic differences in the
general typographical conventions, too. In the original comic, all texts are written in
capitals regardless of whether they are inside perigrams or not. The Finnish versions use
two different strategies: in Juhlasarjat, both dialogue and sound effects are printed in
capitals which resemble text written by hand, while AA uses a uniform font with lower
case letters in dialogue but hand-written upper case letters in sound effects.
A convention in the English comic which has not been transferred into either of the
translations is the excessive use of exclamation marks in both dialogue and sound
effects. Each sound effect is followed by an exclamation mark in the original story,
emphasizing the loudness of the sounds even if the sound effect itself is loud and bold in
appearance. Exclamation marks are absent from the translations. The regular dialogue
inside balloons uses a whole range of punctuation marks available even in the
59
translations, but they are less likely to use exclamation marks for emphasis as often as
the original. Within perigrams, the Finnish comic always uses some punctuation,
however, which means that even the sound effects in balloons must use punctuation.
Indeed, in this corpus, all sound effects within balloons in DDB end with an
exclamation mark. In general, it appears that even when text inside balloons contains
incomplete sentences, an effort is made to create more complete expressions.
Simultaneously, all texts inside perigrams are translated.
An interesting phenomenon in this comic is that the few sound effects inside balloons
resembling dialogue, namely reactions expressing surprise and similar sounds
interpreted as potentially involuntary utterances, have been translated into Finnish as
more “proper” words than the original ones, especially in AA. Examples of this are
HUH? and UH-ULP! in the original comic, translated respectively as MITÄH? (in
AA)/TÄÄH? (in Juhlasarjat), and TUOTA... HUH! (in AA)/ÖH, KLUP! (in
Juhlasarjat). In the first pair of translations, MITÄH?/TÄÄH? are both versions of the
interrogative pronoun 'mitä' ('what'), the former used with the addition of -h for more
emphasis and the latter in an elliptical, emphatic form. In the translation of the second
effect, a whole word has been added to AA. This translation strategy could have been
chosen because the balloons in the Finnish Duck comics appear to strive for more
complete expressions inside the perigrams, reserving them more clearly for dialogue.
“SOB!” and “HIC!”, however, are clearly not dialogue, and they are translated as sound
effects instead of being turned into dialogue even inside balloons or thought balloons.
Some sound effects in DDB refer to previous dialogue in the comic. Scrooge is talking
about a coin and the sound it makes: ”I love to [...] hear it tinkle!” Some panels later, the
coin falls and bounces on the pavement and on some barrels with the sound effect
TINK! TINKLE! In the Finnish dialogue, Scrooge refers to “kilinä” in dialogue but the
sound effects are TINK PLINK (in AA) and PLINK KLINK (in Juhlasarjat), neither of
which is identical to the word in the dialogue, unlike in the original. Unlike in the
Peanuts example above (see 5.2.1.1), however, this translation does not have much
effect on how the story moves forward and how it is interpreted. “Kilin kilin” would
nonetheless be a possible translation that would retain the original similarity, but the
translation would perhaps become slightly repetitive.
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5.2.1.4 Dreamtime Duck of the Never-Never
In Dreamtime Duck of the Never-Never, Scrooge McDuck is out prospecting in an
Australian desert and has to deal with a threatening highwayman, various types of
native animals, and a flash flood. Accordingly, the sound effects involve different tools,
animals, water and other relevant topics. The sound effects show a lot of variation,
perhaps because of the genre which allows for quite surprising events, sounds and
exclamations for humoristic purposes.
In many respects, the translation of the 2005 version of Roope Ankan elämä ja teot by
Markku Saarinen meets the expectations listed in the hypothesis section, and the
individual translations are perhaps the most consistent in their adherence to naturalsounding Finnish language. Firstly, not a single sound effect has been left in its original
English form. This makes the translation exceptional in this corpus since the other
translations use repetitio at least a few times. Secondly, there appears to be little English
interference in the translations. Thirdly, various strategies have been applied to the
translation. An absence of interference is exemplified by the following sound effects
and their translations, which show little similarity: WAAOOGH!/BUUU-UAAH (the
sound of a didgeridoo), WHEW!/PHUH! (relief), RUMBLE!/JYRINÄÄ (an
approaching mob of kangaroos), >SNIFF< >SNIFF</NUUH NUUH? (sniffing),
ZOW!/VIUUH (departing at fast speed), ROAR!/KOSSH (water flooding a cave in the
ground), ROAR!/KOHINAA (water sweeping across the desert in a distance), and
CHINK!/NARSK (digging with a pickaxe). Four Finnish effects are rather similar to the
English original sounds, but even these have been orthographically adjusted:
KPOW!/PAUU (sound of a shotgun), CRSSHH!/KRÄSSHH (sound of sand pouring
into a cave), FLOP!/VOPS (lassoing), and SWOOP!/SVUPSIS (jumping to hang
supported by axe).
There are some surprises, however: contrary to expectations, sound effects have been
omitted even more often than in any of the other comics. No speech balloons have been
left empty, though. Whether or not the removed sound effect would have been difficult
to replace with a translation does not seem to have had any effect on what has been
removed; both loose and embedded effects have been omitted. The choices appear to
have been made based on the relevance of the sound effect for the plot, ignoring
61
potential technical difficulties involved. Ominous, thunderous waves threatening to
wipe away the main characters, and an emu with a role in the plot have retained their
sounds, while sounds coming from minor actions such as dropping down a backpack
(THUD!) or picking up something in a hurry (GLOM!) have been been left out. Though
deletio was unexpected in this comic, it has been used only where appropriate.
Even more interestingly, however, one sound effect has been added into a panel, perhaps
to compensate for a removed one in an adjacent panel. In this particular case, the
omitted sound effect THUD! depicts how Scrooge's backpack is dropped from the back
of his camel by a highwayman of questionable morals after breaking his promise to help
Scrooge up from a cave in the ground. Instead of translating the original sound THUD!,
the translator has added to the previous panel the sound of a rope dropping into the
same cave (HUMPS). In this case, the sound effect has been moved to a more acutely
relevant detail of the story; the falling rope prevents Scrooge from escaping the cave he
is trapped in, but dropping the backpack does not affect the plot in such a significant
way. Even though a sound effect has been added elsewhere, this example is not a case of
transmutatio: a sound effect is not relocated, but one is removed and another with a
different meaning is added. Therefore, the addition of HUMPS and the omission of
THUD! represent two separate translation procedures, deletio and adiectio.
The location of a sound effect appears to have had no impact on how well it has been
translated, as suggested above. If the original sound effect overlaps with a picture, the
sound effect has been erased, the picture has been filled in wherever necessary, and a
translated sound effect has been reinserted into the picture. The translated sound effects
have, however, often been moved so that they do not interfere with the picture and are
placed in a less crowded part of the panel. This is a clear case of transmutatio. In many
other comics examined the original location of the text and the way the it overlaps with
the picture have played a much greater role in whether or not the effect has been
translated, even when the other comics were in black-and-white and would have
required less adjustment.
There are several differences in the conventions that the English and Finnish versions of
DDR1 follow, and they are not unlike the respective conventions of DDB. In the
original version, many sound effects are coloured and outlined with black. In the
62
translation, no sound effects have colour but the effect has been compensated for by a
greater variety in the orthography, for instance using shaky, rumbling characters instead
of a massive multicoloured font. There are also further, systematic differences in the use
of upper and lower case letters when it comes to depicting the “dialogue” or thoughts of
an animal. The original version uses lower case letters to differentiate between some
wild animal sounds and other sounds – for example, between the anthropomorphic
characters' utterances and exclamations, natural sounds, and sounds originating from
man-made objects. Most sounds use capital letters consistently, but animal sounds do
not even begin with a capital, though this type of usage in not systematic in the English
comic. The Finnish version is entirely written in capitals. The systematic changes could
be considered cases of substitutio because the orthography is altered quite significantly.
The use of exclamation marks is another aspect which reveals notable differences
between the different language versions and, on the other hand, great similarity to
DDB's translation. The dialogue in many of the humorous English-language comics,
including this one, uses an overwhelming amount of exclamation marks compared to
the Finnish translations, where they are used more sparingly. Similarly, sound effects
outside speech balloons often have exclamation marks after them in the English original
of the story. In the translation, they are always left out if the sound effect is not enclosed
in a perigram – a partial deletio. Inside a balloon, an exclamation mark is possible.
Again, balloons clearly strive for more complete sentences, if not in sentence structure
then at least in punctuation. Like in DDB, the translation relies more on the typography
to show that a sound is loud and does not add an exclamation mark after the effect to
emphasize the loudness that should be clear from the visual and narrative context.
5.2.1.5 The Cowboy Captain of Cutty Sark
Because the life of Scrooge McDuck is an epic one, the story Cowboy Captain of Cutty
Sark (Cutty Sarkin cowboykapteeni) combines rather different events in a small number
of pages. The themes and, therefore, sound effects involve such diverse phenomena,
inventions and entities as sailing, cattle, wild animals, a massive volcanic eruption, and
an early prototype of the car. In the story, Scrooge is sailing the shores of Indonesia on
the ship Cutty Sark when the infamous explosion of the island of Krakatoa takes place.
63
During the story, he witnesses the invention of the very first car powered by volcanic
energy, sells cattle, and saves the ship from various devastating effects of the eruption,
among other feats.
The story contains plenty of both mechanical and natural sounds; it is 23 pages long,
and 19 of them contain sound effects that are not in the middle of dialogue. In DDR2,
many sound effects are not set in balloons but are nonetheless enclosed in spaces that
function like balloons (see section 2.2.1). For instance, the VROOM sounds from a car
are written inside motion lines behind the machine and the sound of panicking animals
is shown in a cloud of dust. The translations of these sounds are located in the same
areas as the originals.
There are a few differences to the translation of the other Rosa story. Unlike in the
previous story, some sound effects have been copied from the original English version:
BONK!, VROOM!, TAP!, ROAR!, SPLASH, WAP, POW, SMASH, SPLOOSH!,
CRUNCH and SLAP! all retain their English form. Repetitio takes place especially
when the sound effects are coloured and highly visual in some other way. Texts in plain
black have been replaced with translations in black – except for one loose sound effect
which is removed altogether. Some translations have been moved from a prominent
place to a smaller area in the panel, again an instance of transmutatio and, to some
extent, substitio with regard to the changed font. For instance, an approaching flood
wave makes an ominous, overwhelming ROOOAR! through a whole panel in the
original but the Finnish JYMIN has been given a more modest visual form in a less
central position of the panel, undoubtedly an easier effect to recreate. There are a few
instances where an effect crossing an entire panel or an otherwise prominent sound has
been made smaller.
The translated sound effects mostly adhere to Finnish expressions and make rather
frequent use of the letters ä and ö and the sound [y], none of which exist in English. The
English version has apparently affected some of the translations, though, as many
effects contain same letters and sounds as the originals, for example FWEET!/FIIII!, VVRROOM!/VROUM,
SQUIRT!/PRUITS,
WHOOOOOOOOOOSHHH!/
VVVUUUSSHHH and WUH-OH!/O-OU! Then again, sound symbolism and
onomatopoeia might account for some of the similarities. Another example is the sound
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of a steamboat, CHUG CHUG CHUG, which looks so foreign that it has been translated
into TSUK TSUK TSUK. This is an example where the Finnish sound is somewhat like
the English one but differs notably in orthography. Very different sounds also appear, for
instance FUP!/TÖMS, BUMMMMMM/JYRIN and the frustrated MOAAAN!/ÄHH!
Some sound effects have been left untranslated, which did not happen in the other Rosa
translation and is contrary to the expectations. The sounds not translated include such
previously mentioned examples as ROAR! and WAP, some of which can look very
foreign in Finnish. Readers who have acquainted themselves with comics are probably
able to recognize and interpret most of them based on previous experience and the
current context. Nonetheless, at least the sound effects SPLASH and SMASH could
have been made more Finnish by replacing the letter a with ä with little effort. This
strategy has not been exploited in any of the effects.
Sound effects have not only been translated but also added in DDR2; there are a total of
seven cases of adiectio in this comic, more than in any of the others. In addition, in
some panels, sound effects have been moved from one place to another relatively freely,
as in transmutatio. This strategy appears to be more common in this comic than in the
others. The removed elements are compensated for by similar elements, but the
motivation behind the changes is not always immediately visible in this story since there
usually is plenty of room for the new effect in the place of the old one.
In one panel, however, an interesting change has taken place when a small text has been
omitted and a different, bigger one has been added to a different place, similarly to the
cases of deletio and adiectio in DDR1 discussed above. In the English version, a piece
of an exploding Krakatoa hits the ship Scrooge is on with exactly the same sound as in a
previous panel (WAP). Instead of translating the sound effect WAP with, for example, a
sound previously used for the same English sound (KLOP), the sound has been
removed and a different one (MOKS) has been added next to another piece hitting
Scrooge's top hat. Conveniently, this particular story shows how Scrooge gets
acquainted with the top hat, an accessory which later becomes a familiar characteristic
of Scrooge McDuck. It is possible that the translator has made a conscious choice to
direct the reader's attention to the future trademark of the character from a ship which
only makes one appearance and is in that sense quite insignificant.
65
5.2.1.6 Batman
Batman: Year One by DC Comics represents a typical superhero comic in this study,
even if Batman is not strictly speaking a superhero in the traditional sense because he
lacks super powers. The setting of the story is Gotham City, a dark and corrupt place,
which the main characters of this album, Bruce Wayne and Jim Gordon, set out to clean.
Unsurprisingly, many of the sound effects depict cars braking, guns firing, fists flying,
and people grunting. The amount of sound effects in total, however, is smaller than
might be expected: out of 62 pages only 24 pages contain stand-alone sound effects in
writing, even though action, such as fighting or shooting, appears much more
frequently. Some action scenes are perhaps considered to need more emphasis than
others.
Some observations of the use of sound effects can be made based on a general analysis
of the whole album. Police cars, other cars and gunfire figure prominently in the comic,
and they always seem to be accompanied by sound effects. Choppers, grenades, bombs,
collapsing staircases, and other inanimate objects make sounds that are regularly
signified by sound effects in the comic. Cats' meows and a baby's cry are also marked,
and they usually are an important part of the story in terms of emphasis, mood or future
plot lines of the story. The fight scenes, however, are not always accompanied by a
sound track. It appears that fights in which the main character Wayne/Batman or another
good character, Gordon, take part are not illustrated with sound effects, whereas violent
scenes with all other characters often do contain sound effects. For example, Bruce
Wayne practising his martial arts skills by breaking bricks and kicking apart trees has
not been supplied with sound effects, while scenes of corrupt policemen using excessive
force are accompanied by loud effects. Batman's fights have no sound effects
originating from other sources than guns and other inanimate objects. In other words,
the distribution of sound effects may have been used as a means of emphasizing or
downplaying the seriousness of the violence or violent action depending on the
character.
The initial assumption was that embedded sound effects are not translated at all in BAT
because of conventions within the genre. This expectation was found to be in line with
how the translation had been made: no effort had been put into changing the sound
66
effects in the pictures. Only factors related to printing have affected the look of the
colourful sound effects embedded in the imagery; the shades, colours and quality of the
print have changed slightly, though even the size of the album and its images remains
the same. This may either be seen as a sign of reluctance to take up the cumbersome and
potentially costly task of changing the pictures or, alternatively, suggest that the
translator or the publisher thinks that the sound effects are such an integral element of
the visual contents that tampering with them might be considered a violation of the
artwork and the original artist's intention. In the highly visual sound effects, repetitio
could indicate respect for the comic as a dynamic piece of art.
Some sound effects in speech balloons have not been altered except for rewriting the
text in its original form, though one text (a universally understandable AAAA) has been
copied directly from the original picture, resulting in a poorer quality of print. Some
sound effects, on the other hand, have been translated inside speech balloons, unlike in
the pictures.
As in some of the other comics, sound effects inside balloons are marked with asterisks
or by marks which resemble half an asterisk (marked here with the 'greater than' and
'less than' marks > <). The > < marks are absent from the translation, and effects are,
instead, marked with a bold font. In the original comic, as in the Duck comics, bolding
is used more often as emphasis in the dialogue than in the Finnish version, so bolding is
reserved for this specific function in Finnish.
With few translations and many cases of repetitio, all translated sound effects are most
conveniently presented in a single table (Table 8 below). All the seven translations are
from inside speech balloons.
67
Depicted action
English sound effect
Finnish sound effect
disapproval
WHFF
HUH.
being hit
NGGG
AGGGH!
awoken by cat
nffmgmm
MMMMMH
waking up, woken up by a cat
mmfgg
MMMMMH
waking-up, grunting, hearing
bad news
ggnf
MMH
hit by a dart
HHKKK
AGGGH!
cough
>KOFF<
KÖH!
Table 8: Sound effects and their translations in Batman
The table shows that the use of capitals is more consistent in the Finnish version, even
when the depicted sound is muffled and drowsy. This can be seen either as a positive
sign, all sound effects being indicated in a consistent way, or a loss, limiting the
available means of expression of the typography. On the other hand, punctuation has
been added to some of the sound effects, which is in line with the assumption that more
complete sentences are preferred in the speech balloons, as already observed in some of
the other comics. In >KOFF</KÖH!, the > < markings have been removed, a change
possible to interpret as a kind of a loss or, more likely, a difference in conventions. In
any case, it is a type of substitutio. In general, the few sound effect translations are
consistent with other sounds of similar themes: injuries result in AGGGH!, while
waking up involves a lot of MMH. Considering the small amount of texts changed,
however, the most common strategy for sound effects is not translating them at all. No
adiectio, deletio or transmutatio takes place, which is no surprise when mainly the
strategy of repetitio is employed.
5.2.1.7 Watchmen
One striking feature of Watchmen is that it has few or no embedded or loose sound
effects, as if implying that the reader knows what kinds of sounds accompany the
events. Some sound effects are present inside speech balloons to depict sounds
originating from human sources, however, which shifts the focus from action to people
or, alternatively, lets the pictures speak for themselves. Brash and showy sound effects
are missing entirely. Because sound effects are relatively sparse in the comic, the
68
empirical study encompasses a larger section of the comic compared to the other comics
of the corpus – in other words, the first two chapters.
Because Watchmen is mainly a more or less disillusioned representative of the superhero
genre and because the sound effects are restricted to text in balloons, the sound effects
are mostly various grunts of pain and similar involuntary sounds. Quite often, too,
grunts originate from one of the vigilantes, a darker character called Rorschach, who
also happens to wear a mask. He makes plenty of HURM sounds, which may be caused
either by the mask or his general attitude – it is hard to tell which.
The dialogues are written in capital letters, and so are the sound effects. Many of the
sound effects end with a full stop. Those without a full stop are often sounds from the
more primal end of the spectrum, such as sounds of pain. The translation mostly follows
the same pattern as the English effects, but as before, the sound effects are not always
marked in the same way. The English-language version uses the >marking style<
familiar from Batman, but Finnish uses at least two different ways of marking the same
effects, as in >HUHH</-HUHH- and >BURRUP</RRÖYYHH.
All of the sound effects appear to have been rewritten, but few of them have been
changed into a more Finnish expression. In fact, in only three instances the sound
effects have been changed, and two of them are related to eating. Some sound effects
have lost or gained a few letters but remain practically unchanged in the two language
versions. English-language messy eating of beans CHLOP. THLUP. SHORP. LEP. has
become SLURP. SHLUP. SHLOP. LUP. in the Finnish translation, and the translation
has some similarities with the original. It is possible that the English sound effects have
caused some interference in the translation or that onomatopoeia or universals of sound
symbolism account for the similarities in the different versions of the effects. The
influence of the original sound effects on the translation are clearest in the last pair
LEP./LUP., where the difference is minimal. LUP. is not a very typical Finnish sound of
eating (cf. e.g. “SLURP”, “MAISKIS” or “MUSSUN MUSSUN”), whereas a more
common Finnish sound is the translation of >BURRUP< into RRÖYYHH. A surprising
translation is PAHH in English becoming PFAA in Finnish. In this particular context,
the sound is most likely to represent a feeling that might be expressed by BAH or
PAH/PLÄÄH in a less serious genre. The translation retains the sharp stop [p] of the
69
original effect but introduces a sound more foreign to Finnish than the ones in the
original sound effect, namely [f]. In short, the few translated sound effects are dealt with
in different ways but no further conclusions can be drawn on this basis. Repetitio is
again the most frequently used strategy, with no instances of adiectio, deletio,
transmutatio or substitio (except for a few changes in how sound effects are marked).
The translation Vartijat in some ways resembles Batman: Ensimmäinen vuosi. Both rely
on the reader's understanding of what each English effect means. However, the
translations cannot be compared directly because the sound effects are distributed in
different ways. The texts left untranslated in BAT are in pictures whereas some balloons
are translated – a common trend in almost all of the comics – but this is not the case in
Vartijat. However, some similarity is found when other aspects are considered: Vartijat
containa a lot of inscriptions, or text as a part of picture, and many of them are left
untranslated. As a whole, sound effects are much less frequently translated inside
balloons in this comic.
5.2.2 Discussion on the translation strategies
Considering the whole corpus, a number of translation strategies are present: repetitio,
deletio, adiectio, substitutio, transmutatio and translation have been applied to the
sound effects of this corpus. The different strategies are not evenly distributed among
the different comics, however, and certain genres prefer certain strategies. Some of the
observations are in line with the initial hypothesis, while others exhibit a greater variety
of strategies than expected. In the case of Watchmen, the original use of sound effects is
also surprising because they appear only in balloons. The use of different translation
strategies varies considerably depending on the comic and its genre. Some general
trends are discernible, however.
Repetitio takes place very frequently in the serious comics Batman and Watchmen and is
much more common in them than the translation of the effects. Most of their sound
effects are directly transferred from the original, though the text inside balloons may be
rewritten. By contrast, in the humorous comics, most of the sound effects are translated
but repetitio also occurs. The use of repetitio in humorous comics can be affected by the
70
location, typography and colour of the sound effect. For instance, if a sound effect
extents over several panels, it is more likely that it has been left in its English form.
Effects with showy or colourful typography are more likely to be left as they are in the
original, and as expected, embedded sound effects are more often transferred in their
original form than loose sound effects. There are exceptions, though, and for example in
Dreamtime Duck of the Never-Never, all sound effects are translated regardless of their
location in balloons or outside them. Some cases of repetitio appear to be motivated by
the sounds themselves: some sound effects transferred from the original are understood
quite well in Finnish, too.
Deletio is rare in the corpus. Most cases of deletio were found in Dreamtime Duck of
the Never-Never, which used this strategy on three occasions. One omission was found
in The Cowboy Captain of the Cutty Sark and in the sample of Peanuts strips. Only in
PEA, however, is the omitted effect relevant to the understanding of the joke or the
story. The deletio in DDR1 and DDR2 might be the result of more deliberate processing
of the meaning of the effect because the removed effects are compensated for or
illustrate such minor actions or events that their omission does not remove anything
crucial from the comic. Minor changes that could be regarded as partial deletio occur
frequently when exclamation marks are removed from sound effects outside perigrams.
The fact that omissions are possible without rendering the comic incomprehensible is
interesting from the point of view of constrained translation. Pictures do not always
complicate the translation process but can also make it easier.
Adiectio appears to appear in conjunction with deletio, though not always when
something is removed (the Peanuts strips in the corpus do not contain any additions but
one crucial case of removal was found). Only the two comics by Rosa contain some
cases of adiectio. The same translations also contain more deletio and transmutatio than
any of the other comics. This suggests that a comic that resorts to more complicated
strategies than straightforward repetitio or “simple” translation is more likely to use a
wider range of different complicated strategies than the other comics. Transmutatio is
used in some of the humorous comics. It is applied especially to sound effects in the
picture and appears to be particularly popular for turning embedded sound effects into
loose sound effects by relocating them to an emptier area of a panel. This is
undoubtedly done to reduce the need for editing the picture.
71
Substitutio was found only in rather small details, such as dividing a sound effect
differently between panels, using different fonts or font colours, or using different ways
of marking animal sounds. In addition, replacing hand-written lettering with printed
letters and variation between upper case and lower case letters also appeared rather
frequently. Other cases of substitutio included turning the contents of speech balloons
into more complete words and giving them punctuation. Some of these changes are
probably motivated by different conventions of different publications. In short,
substitutio is common but concerns mostly minor extralinguistic details.
The different strategies of translation can be mixed freely and can occur even within a
single panel. One large sound effect in a picture can be translated, while the next, very
visual sound effect in the same panel keeps its original form. This shows that the choice
of strategy can and should be weighed individually for each effect, taking into
consideration both the linguistic and technical aspects of the particular translation.
Even when repetitio is applied in humorous comics, most of the effects in the translated
comics convey all the necessary information. The effects that are transferred are often
sufficiently familiar for the Finnish audience to understand. In only a few cases, the
translation of a comic's sound effect detracts from its interpretation: one deletio makes
the interpretation of a joke more difficult (even repetitio would have made the joke
more clear), and in another case, a translation in dialogue does not match the sound
effect and therefore fails to convey a joke (both examples are from PEA). Other minor
omissions or changes, such as those found in the Duck comics, do not lower the
information value of the comic in any significant way. The foreignness resulting from
repetitio may affect the reading experience for some Finns, while the use of the other
strategies probably rarely results in confusion.
In the two serious graphic novels, BAT and WM, the high degree of repetitio is more
challenging to the reader. In BAT, an attempt is made to adapt the sound effects within
perigrams to the requirements of the Finnish reader, but in WM, this is unusual. In short,
the translations of the sound effects in BAT and WM are more difficult and probably
require more knowledge of English from the reader. However, the audiences of these
comics are probably expected to be quite different than those of the humorous comics.
72
As expected, the location of the sound effect plays an important role in translation.
There is, again, variation between the strategies of different comics, but the majority of
texts inside balloons is translated. WM and BAT are more likely to have their balloon
texts left untranslated than the other comics, but even in BAT they are more often
translated than the other effects. Embedded sound effects are most often kept in their
original form. Some of the comics have few or no embedded effects at all. Loose sound
effects fall somewhere between the two types mentioned above, but the strategies
applied to them vary significantly from straightforward translation to repetitio and
deletio. Since loose sound effects do not overlap with pictures, they should be easier to
replace than embedded ones and, in that sense, resemble the text in balloons. Because
the two are not as often translated despite the similarity, they are perhaps perceived
differently, with sound effects in balloons resembling dialogue and effects outside
balloons equated more with pictorial content.
The role of colours also becomes clear in the sound effect translations. At least in Calvin
and Hobbes, originally colourful sound effects were more often translated in the blackand-white Finnish album than in the album which uses colour. In the localisation of a
comic using colours, the translation of a sound effect probably requires more work.
Somewhat similarly, a colourful sound effect may be translated in black instead of in
colour. No clear generalisations can be made on this trait, however, because the policies
differ in different comics to some extent.
5.2.3 Sound effects by source
In this section, sound effects are categorised by their source and properties and analysed
from the point of view of sound symbolism. Because sound effects also depict sounds
that do not necessarily have established ways of describing them in writing, it could be
expected that they make frequent use of sound symbolism. By examining the groups of
sound effects, categorised by their semantic content, I am hoping to uncover new
potential sound symbols for the properties that the sounds of the groups share. I also
compare the effects in my corpus with the sound symbols that have been previously
introduced in section 4.1 of this thesis and suggested by Bloomfield (1933, cited in
Abelin 1999:32), Rhodes (1994: 276-278), Oswalt (1994: 297) and Leskinen (1991:
73
355). Because few Finnish sound symbols have already been identified, I am extracting
them from my corpus through comparing the Finnish sounds with the English sound
symbols and potential sound symbols, and identifying which traits occur in the Finnish
sound effects without interference from the English originals. However, since only the
corpus scrutinised is limited, I can only suggest potential sound symbols, which have to
be confirmed or rejected by further research based on broader linguistic material.
Some of the categories overlap, and a single sound effect can belong to several of them.
In such cases, the effect is grouped under all of the appropriate categories. Some sound
effects depict an action that contains almost opposite elements, for example being of
both
a
sudden
and
a
slightly
more
gradual
nature.
For
example,
CHUNK/TSUNK/TSUNK is the sound of a trident sinking into a bag of coins in Barks'
Secret of Atlantis. The sound effect could refer to different phases of this action or their
combination: the trident making its way through water, ripping through the fabric of the
bag, sinking into the coins, or, finally, stopping suddenly at impact. Some of these
possible meanings of the effect are sudden, others take slightly longer, and still others
depict impact or breakage. Categorising the effects based on only their semantic content
is somewhat difficult. Rhodes' (1994: 276-278) identification of [tʃ-] as a short sound or
a sound with irregular onset, however, would help to categorise this as an abrupt sound,
but the division in this section is based on the information content of the sound effects
rather than their appearance.
The following categories are identified: impact, friction, air current, liquid and food,
breakage, explosions and gunshots, long-lasting sounds, and pitch. The categories depict
an action or an event, the materials involved, or the quality of the sound effect itself, as
already explained in section 5.1. The duration and the pitch of a sound are examined in
the same way as the sound effects grouped by their source, but they differ from the
others as they are properties of the sounds themselves. This is why they are examined in
their own section after the thematically divided effects.
The following sections deal with the different aspects and contain effects from all of the
comics but avoid unnecessary repetition when the sound effects are identical or
differing slightly only in the amount of letters. When a sound effect is too difficult to
interpret accurately, it is excluded from the list. As previously, the abbreviations DDB,
74
DDR1, DDR2, C&H, BAT, PEA, and WM refer to Barks' The Secret of Atlantis, Rosa's
Dreamtime Duck of the Never-Never, Rosa's The Cowboy Captain of Cutty Sark, Calvin
and Hobbes, Batman, Peanuts and Watchmen, respectively.
Because a new approach is used in this analysis, there is no established way of marking
the different aspects of the sound effects. The system adopted for marking the examples,
letters of the alphabet, and sounds is based on phonetic conventions and on what I
consider the clearest way of differentiating between the several different aspects
discussed in the same context. As in the section above, examples from the corpus are
written in CAPITAL LETTERS without quotation marks. The order of sound effect and
its
translation
or
translations
is
the
same
as
above,
namely
ENGLISH
EFFECT/FINNISH TRANSLATION/SECOND FINNISH TRANSLATION. Letters of
the alphabet are written in italics, while sounds from both English and Finnish are
placed within [square brackets]. The location of certain sounds or combinations of
sounds inside an effect may be important, which is why hyphens are used within the
square brackets to indicate the sounds' place in a word.
5.2.3.1 Impact
Sounds of “impact” depict sounds originating from the collision of two (or several)
objects. The sound varies depending on how soft or hard the different objects are, how
fast the object or objects are moving, and on whether and how either side yields at
impact. There is a significant difference between, for example, a pillow landing on a
bed, a bullet hitting and breaking glass, and an object falling into water. Despite
variation, these types of sound effects are easy to distinguish as a distinct group of their
own on the basis of the action they originate from. Sound effects for impact found in my
corpus are presented in Table 9, subdivided on the basis of the types of materials
involved in the impact.
75
Source of sound English
Finnish
Second Finnish
translation
Comic
Hard and hard
bullet against
wall
SPAKK
SPAKK
baseball bat
against furniture
SMASH
PAM
pieces of lamp
against floor
pieces of lamp
against floor
BAT
PAM
C&H
PING PING PING PING PING
PING
PING PING
PING
C&H
KRITCH
KRUNCH
RITS RATS
C&H
RITS RATS
door against door SLAM!
frame
SLAM!
receiver against
phone
*CLICK*
*KLIK*
volcanic rock
against camera
CRUNCH!
CRUNCH!
DDR2
volcanic rock
against boat
POW
POW
DDR2
volcanic rock
against boat
POW
PAM
DDR2
volcanic rock
against boat
BAM
POK
DDR2
volcanic rock
against boat
WAP
KLOP
DDR2
hooves against
deck
STOMPITY
JYTIN
DDR2
hooves against
deck
STOMP
JYTIN
DDR2
pickaxe against
ground
CHINK!
NARSK
DDR1
pickaxe against
ground
CHINK!
ROUSK
DDR1
coin against
machine
CLINK!
KLINK
KLINK
DDB
coin against
ground
TINK!
TINK
PLINK
DDB
coin against
ground
TINKLE!
PLINK
KLINK
DDB
coin against pan
PLINK!
TLINK
PLINK
DDB
76
PEA
*KLIK*
C&H
coin against
ground
PLINK!
PLINK
PLINK
DDB
trident against
coin bag
CHUNK!
TSUNK
TSUNK
DDB
head against pole BONK!
BONK!
DDR2
MOKS
DDR2
SLAP!
DDR2
Hard and soft
volcanic rock
against top hat
photo against
coins
SLAP!
head against wall THUD!
TUNKS
boomerang
against hand
MOKS
DDR1
TAP
DDR2
WHAK!
hoof against head PAT
KLONK
DDB
snowball against POW POW POW POW POW POW LÄTS LÄTS
person
POW
POW
LÄTS LÄTS
C&H
person against
ceiling
THOOM
THOOM
BAT
fist against face
WHUKK
WHUKK
BAT
foot against head THWOKK
THWOKK
BAT
person against
ground
WHOMP
WHOMP
PEA
person against
football
THUMP
THUMP
PEA
ball against
ground
PAT
PEA
ball against
ground
BUMPETYBUMP
PEA
ball against
ground
BUMPETYBUMPETYBUMP
PEA
ball against
ground
BUMP-BUMP
PEA
ball against
ground
BUMP
PEA
Soft and soft
rope against sand
HUMPS
DDR1
lasso against
person
FLOP!
VOPS
DDR1
animal against
person
FUP!
TÖMS
DDR2
77
tiger against
person
KAPOW!
KAPOW!
KAPOW!
C&H
tiger against
person
WUMP!
WUMP!
TUMPS!
C&H
person against
person
SHOVE
TYÖNTÖ
TYÖNTÖ
C&H
finger against
finger
NAPS
DDR2
DDR2
finger against
shoulder
TAP!
TAP!
people against
snow
SPLOOP
SPLOOP
SUIHH
C&H
pie against
person
SPLAT!
PLÄTS
SPLÄTS
DDB
pie against
person
SPLOK!
SPLÄT
SPLOTSH
DDB
pies against head SMACK!
SKLÄT
KLÄTS
DDB
person against
water
SPLASH!
MOLSK
MOLSKIS
DDB
paint against
hand
SPLUT!
water against
person
SQUIRT!
RUITS
DDR2
water against
person
SQUIRT!
PRUITS
DDR2
coin against pie
PLONK!
PLONK
water against
boat
SLAP!
LOISKIS
DDR2
huge rock against SMASH
water
SMASH
DDR2
water against
earth
WHAP!
VVAPS
DDR2
boat against
water
SPLOOSH!
POLSKIS
DDR2
volcanic rock
against water
SPLASH
SPLASH
DDR2
Liquid and soft
DDR1
Liquid and hard
Table 9: Sound effects for impact
78
PLONK
DDB
In this heterogeneous group of sound effects, the following combinations of sounds are
present: [-ŋk], [pl-], [spl-], [sm-], [kl-], [-tʃ], [tʃ-], [wh-], [st-], [sk-], [ps-], [-mp], [sl-],
[kr-], [-ntʃ], [sp-] and [θ-]. Out of these, Bloomfield has identified [kr-] as a sign of
noisy impact. He also says that [b-] indicates dull impact, and that is the function of [b-]
in the above examples, too. Rhodes makes several relevant observations: [p-], [b-], [bl-],
[kl-], [pl-] and [kr-], found in the sound effects of the corpus, are mostly described as
sounds having to do with “abrupt onset”, as is fitting for sounds of impact, and [tʃ-]
indicates a short sound or irregular onset. [-ts] appears to be used in a similar function in
Finnish. Based on the sound effects in my material, I suggest that [-ŋk] is also a sound
symbol for impact and a sound with “abrupt onset” in both languages. In English, [sm-]
from SMACK and SMASH could also tentatively be added to the list of sounds with
“abrupt onset”, and [θ-] and [-mp] are probably involved in “dull impact”.
It appears that the stop sounds, especially [p] and [k], are dominant in sounds
representing impact since they can occur independently, in combination with other
sounds, and both as the initial and final consonant of an effect. On the whole, they are
very often present in this type of sound effect since only four of the 57 English effects in
Table 9 do not contain a single stop sound. I suggest that the stops are symbols for
abrupt sounds and sounds of impact in Finnish, too, because of their frequency in the
translations. This phenomenon, as discussed above, could be explained by the
abruptness and certain hardness of the stop sounds themselves. The voiced stops [b] and
[d], however, are used in sounds representing dull impact in Table 9. Though PING
PING PING uses the letter g, it does not contain the sound [g], there are no examples of
the voiced stop [g] to analyse. I suggest that the nasal sounds [n] and [m] and, at times,
the use of voiced stops [b] and [d] instead of the voiceless [p] and [t] gives a sound
effect a lower-pitch, more booming quality based on the way they are used in the effects
of Table 9.
Stop sounds and [-ŋk] and [-ts] appear in the Finnish sounds of impact as they do in
English, but other potential sound symbols are also visible in the Finnish sound effects.
For example, the combination [-ks] appears in the Finnish TUNKS and twice in MOKS
from different comics. It is not frequent but occurs only in Finnish without any prompt
from the original English effects in three different comics and contains the stop [k], with
stops previously identified as abrupt sounds (by e.g. Bredin & Oswalt). The similar
79
combination of stop and sibilant [-ps] would appear to serve as an abrupt sound in
Finnish, too, for example in HUMPS. [kl-], on the other hand, is not absent from the
English sound effects, but occurs more often in the Finnish effects (in KLINK,
KLONK, SKLÄT, KLÄTS, *KLIK*, and KLOP). [pl-] is common, too, though it
occurs so frequently especially in sounds depicting wetness that it can also have other
functions besides indicating impact.
5.2.3.2 Friction
Sounds of friction serve as a contrast to sounds of impact in the sense that they depict a
prolonged contact with a surface. Table 10 below collects them together. As with sounds
of impact, it would be possible to divide the sounds of friction based on the materials
involved, but the relatively small amount of these sounds in my corpus does not call for
a further division.
Source of sound
English
Finnish
Comic
water against ground
ROAR!
JYMIN
DDR1
water against ground
ROAR!
JYRIN
DDR1
water against ground
ROAR!
KOHINAA
DDR1
water against ground
ROAR!
JYRINÄÄ
DDR1
water against ground
(flooding downwards)
ROAR!
KOSSH
DDR1
sand against ground
CRSSHH!
KRÄSSHH
DDR1
sand against ground
CRUNCH
HRUMPS!
DDR1
wheels against ground
SCREEECHH
SCREEECHH
BAT
wheels against ground
SKREEECHH
SKREEECHH
BAT
wheels against ground
SKREEEEEE
SKREEEEEE
BAT
hooves against deck
NARSK
DDR2
person against rope
VIUP
DDR2
ship against air
SWISSSSHHHHH
HHHHHSSSSSSSS
DDR2
air against suppressor
PFFT
PFFT
BAT
Table 10: Sound effects for friction
80
Four effects differ from the others slightly in terms of content. Most of the sounds
depict
something
moving
over
a
surface
without
constrictions,
but
CRSSHH/KRÄSSHH, ROAR/KOSSH and CRUNCH/HRUMPS depict the action of
something pouring into a confined space, and PFFT/PFFT is the sound of air rapidly
moving through a confined space. The two former effects depict a more gradual
movement, while the latter two sounds involve a sudden movement, namely that of sand
abruptly collapsing downwards into a cave and air pressing through a gun's suppressor.
The first two effects have similar traits in Finnish as both of them contain the
combination of consonants sh, which can be stretched to prolong the sound.
CRUNCH/HRUMPS contains the abrupt [-tʃ] in English and [-ps] in Finnish, perhaps to
end the slowly beginning sound abruptly.
As mentioned previously, Leskinen identifies [h] as a sound involving friction and
Oswalt mentions that fricatives involve abrasion and air. The letter h is indeed quite
frequent in these sound effects especially in Finnish. There is only one case of the
fricative [f] in the sound effects in English, but sibilant fricatives figure prominently in
the effects. In short, fricatives are common in these effects. Another relevant sound
symbol suggested by Bloomfield is [skr-], symbolising a grating impact or sound. An
example of this is SKREEEEEE as a sound of a car braking. This type of sound appears
frequently in BAT with several alternative spellings. Besides the numerous fricatives,
extracting any other specific symbols from these particular effects is difficult.
5.2.3.3 Air current
This category includes sounds involving air current or sounds made by objects moving
swiftly through air. The sound of rapid movement is included in this category because it
is interpreted as the sound of something swishing through the air. In Table 11, the
sounds are subdivided into two groups based on whether they depict movement in air or
movement of air. For the sake of clarity, sounds originating from musical instruments,
animals or people are not included in this category, except for some relevant sounds of
whistling, sighing or similar.
81
Source of sound
English
Finnish
Comic
sails flapping
FLAP!
LÄPS
DDR2
helicopter rotor
WHUP WHUP WHUP
WHUP WHUP WHUP BAT
boomerang flying
through air
ZING!
SVIUH
DDR1
rope moving
through air
HUMPS
DDR1
ship flying through SWISSSSHHHHH
air
HHHHHSSSSSSSS
DDR2
person moving
through air
SVUPSIS
DDR1
VIUP
DDR2
VIUUH
DDR1
Something moving
through air
SWOOP!
person moving
through air
camel moving fast
ZOW!
Air moving
pyroclastic flow
WHOOOOOOOOOOSHHH! VVVUUUSSHHH
DDR2
sigh of relief
WHEW!
PHUH!
DDR1
sigh
SIGHHH
HUOKAUUUS
C&H
sigh
SIGH
UUH
PEA
hush
SHH
SHH
PEA
sneeze
AHCHOO
AATSHII
PEA
whistle
FWEET!
FIIII!
DDR2
shooting with
suppressor
PFFT
PFFT
BAT
gas grenade
FSSS
FSSS
BAT
gas grenade
SSSSS
SSSSS
BAT
Table 11: Sound effects for air current
The approximants [v] in Finnish and [w] in English are common in the sounds of air
current. According to Rhodes, [w-] signifies poorly resolvable onset. Many effects with
[w-] could fit that criterion. Again, Rhodes' [tʃ-] appears in AHCHOO/AATSHII. In this
case, however, the sound effect as a whole is not “short” or with “irregular onset”, but
the short [tʃ-] is surrounded by several vowels.
Especially in sounds involving air stream moving through constricted spaces and
82
possessing a more hissing quality, sibilants and the fricative [h] and, to some extent, [f]
are rather frequent. The shushing SHH and the SSSSS of a gas grenade are good
examples of this. This is in line with Oswalt's observation that fricatives are often
involved with abrasion and air. In fact, all of the English effects here contain fricatives.
The same is found in Finnish. In Finnish, the combination [-viu-] appears several times
in two different comics without being influenced by English: SVIUH, VIUUH and VIUP.
I suggest that it is a Finnish sound symbol for air current. Two cases of the rather similar
[-vu-] are found, but they may be influenced by the original English sounds. Whether or
not it is a Finnish sound symbol would need further examination. [v-] could be another
sound symbol, but its distribution in the translations is not as clear as that of [-viu-]: it
appears both with and without prompt from the English effect. Again, further research is
necessary to confirm or reject it as a Finnish sound symbol. In short, fricatives,
especially [f], [h] and [s], are systematically involved with streaming air. The tendency
to contain fricatives is also found in sounds of friction.
5.2.3.4 Sounds involving liquid and food
These sounds are gathered together on the basis that they involve to some extent fluid or
wet materials as opposed to solid objects. In Table 12, they are grouped together based
on whether the material is flowing or wet. Human actions involving these materials are
also gathered into a separate subgroup.
Source of sound English
Finnish
Second Finnish Comic
translation
NYYH!
Actions
sobbing
SOB!
Nyyh!
sneezing
AHCHOO!
AATSHII!
PEA
gulping
*GULP*
*GULP*
PEA
drinking
NK NK NK
NK NK NK
WM
eating
MUNCH
MUMS
eating
CHOMP
MUMPS
PEA
messy eating
CHLOP.
SLURP.
WM
messy eating
THLUP.
SHLUP.
WM
messy eating
SHORP.
SHLOP.
WM
83
MUMS
DDB
C&H
messy eating
LEP.
LUP.
WM
coin landing in
pie
PLONK!
PLONK
PLONK
DDB
pie fight
SPLAT!
PLÄTS
SPLÄTS
DDB
pie fight
SPLOK!
SPLÄT
SPLOTSH
DDB
pie fight
SMACK!
SKLÄT
KLÄTS
DDB
playing with
food
BLUCK
LITS
LITS
C&H
playing with
food
SCHLOOP
LÄTS
LÄTS
C&H
playing with
food
BLIP
SLURP
SLURP
C&H
playing with
food
BLORK
LÄTS
LÄTS
C&H
poking at mud
SCHLOOP
BLUP
BLUB
C&H
poking at mud
PLITCH
SPLUT
SPLUT
C&H
poking at mud
BLOP
SPLURT
SPLURT
C&H
poking at mud
PLIP
LITS
LITS
C&H
poking at mud
PLOOP
LÄTS
LÄTS
C&H
poking at mud
PLOP
PLUTS
PLUTS
C&H
walking in mud
PLUBLIPTHH
BLUUURB
BLUUURB
C&H
walking in mud
THWIPP
PLUUTS
PLUUTS
C&H
walking in mud
PLUP
PLUP
PLUP
C&H
moving masses
of water
ROAR!
JYMIN
DDR1
moving masses
of water
ROAR!
JYRIN
DDR1
moving masses
of water
ROAR!
KOHINAA
DDR1
moving masses
of water
ROAR!
JYRINÄÄ
DDR1
moving masses
of water
BUMMMMM
JYRIN
DDR2
water flooding a ROAR!
cave in ground
KOSSH
DDR1
water sucked
into a cave
KLURRRPS
DDR1
Wet materials
Fluid materials
GURGLE!
84
water against
boat
SLAP!
LOISKIS
DDR2
boat landing in
water
SPLOOSH!
POLSKIS
DDR2
rock falling into SPLASH
water
SPLASH
DDR2
falling into water SPLASH!
MOLSK
MOLSKIS
DDB
spraying colour
on hand
SPLUT!
DDR1
spraying water
into flames
SQUIRT!
RUITS
DDR2
spraying water
into flames
SQUIRT!
PRUITS
DDR2
imitation of
water
SPLISH SPLASH LITS LÄTS
LITS LÄTS
C&H
imitation of
water
DRIP DRIP
TIP TIP
TIP TIP
C&H
imitation of
water
FWOOOSH
SPLOOSH
LOISKIS LÄISKIS LOISKIS
LÄISKIS
imitation of
water
FWISHH SPLISH LITSIS LÄTSIS
LITSIS LÄTSIS C&H
imitation of
water
SPLASH SPLASH LÄTS LÄTS
LÄTS LÄTS
C&H
C&H
Table 12: Sound effects involving liquid and food
In English, a majority of the sounds of fluid material contain a sibilant. Out of all
English effects in Table 12, most contain either a sibilant or [p]. Of the exceptions,
GURGLE and GULP apparently use [gu-] to depict watery sounds, while the roaring
sounds depict such huge masses of water that they apparently focus on the looming,
roaring threat of water rather than its wetness. NK NK NK depicts drinking
(swallowing), so it not necessarily linked with the liquid itself but with the action of
drinking. Rhodes identifies [dr-], [tr-], [sl-], [fl-] and [m-] as depicting liquid sounds.
Rhodes' [dr-] occurs once in my corpus, in DRIP, and [sl-] once in SLAP (which could
also be used as a sound effect for impact). [m-] is used initially only in MUNCH. In
addition, the sound is present in SMACK, BUMMMMM and CHOMP, but the content
of these sound effects involves roaring masses of water, pie, and noisy eating rather than
flowing water. It may be that [m] is especially involved in eating and food instead of
flowing forms of liquid. [tr-] and [fl-] are absent in these sound effects. I would
85
tentatively add [gu-] to the list of sounds related to liquids, especially as the sound of
liquid moving through constricted spaces, since GURGLE is the sound of water flowing
into a cave and GULP refers to the sound of swallowing. [pl-] and [spl-] also occur
frequently both in English and Finnish, and [-ʃ] occurs several times especially in the
final position.
In the Finnish translations, the letter ä is used slightly more often than in other types of
effects. The traditional sounds LÄISKIS, LÄTS and their variations – PLÄTS,
SPLÄTS, PLÄT, SKLÄT, KLÄTS and LÄTSIS – are frequent in the Finnish sounds.
Interestingly, the order of some of the letters in these water-related sound effects
appears to be of little importance: the medial [-læt-] stays the same, but the elements
around it change and switch places without altering the meaning of the sound much. I
therefore suggest that [-læt-] indicates a wet sound in Finnish, especially when
combined with [s], [p] or [k].
The combinations [-ts-] and [-sk-] occur in the Finnish effects several times, but are
almost absent in English, with [sk-] present only once in SQUIRT. This indicates that
their presence is not explained by interference from the source language and that they
are typical of Finnish. I suggest that these are Finnish sound symbols for liquid, at least
in some contexts. The rather frequent [-ʃ], [pl-] and [spl-], present both with and without
English influence, could be added to the list of potential sound symbols. Sometimes,
however, [spl-] in particular occurs in sounds depicting impact with liquid involved, so
its meaning could be extended to cover both.
5.2.3.5 Breakage
The sounds of breaking objects are easy to gather from the corpus, but they are
relatively few in number, even in the representative of the superhero genre. Because of
this, they are not divided into more specific groups in Table 13.
86
Source of sound
English
Finnish
Second Finnish Comic
translation
coin ripping
through hat
RIP!
RIP
RRITS
DDB
trident piercing
bag
CHUNK!
TSUNK
TSUNK
DDB
pickaxe digging
ground
CHINK!
NARSK
DDR1
pickaxe digging
ground
CHINK!
ROUSK
DDR1
rock breaking
camera
CRUNCH!
CRUNCH!
DDR2
baseball bat
SMASH
breaking furniture
PAM
PAM
C&H
breaking lamp
KRITCH
KRUNCH
RITS RATS
RITS RATS
C&H
bullet damaging
wall
SPAKK
SPAKK
BAT
breaking
handcuffs
CHINKK
CHINKK
BAT
breaking branch
*SNAP*
*NAPS*
pillar breaking in
half
KKRAAAKKK
KKRAAAKKK
BAT
chewing pastille
>CRONCH.
CRONCH<
KRUNTS.
KRUNTS.
WM
*NAPS*
C&H
Table 13: Sound effects for breakage
As mentioned above, Rhodes identifies [tʃ-] as a short type of sound. Not unexpectedly,
many sounds depicting the abrupt action of breakage contain this sound in English and
the corresponding [-ts] in Finnish. In this relatively small sample, a similar sound is
used in both languages at least in the context of something breaking. In the Finnish
RRITS, it is present in a sound effect with an original that contains no such sound,
which suggests that it is acceptable to use [-ts] for breakage in Finnish.
[kr-] also appears in both languages, but less so in Finnish: CRUNCH, KKRAAAKKK
and KRUNTS KRUNTS are the only examples, which are either identical to or heavily
influenced by the original sound effects. At least in this small sample, [kr-] as a sound of
breakage is not as common in Finnish as in English. Bloomfield identifies [kr-] as a
87
noisy impact, while Rhodes mentions the element of abrupt onset. As for noisy impact,
[kr-] regularly appears in noisy words, such as “crash” and “crack”, but CRUNCH as a
sound of chewing something crunchy is not necessarily noisy compared. Rhodes' idea of
abrupt onset is, in this context, more accurate, but I suggest that [kr-] could also be
given a narrower meaning of breakage in addition to the more general characterisation.
The contrasting descriptions are explained by the fact that with only a relatively limited
number of combinations that a language typically accepts as pronounceable, certain
sounds and combinations of sounds serve several purposes. Nonetheless, certain
similarities exist.
Rhodes' idea of [p-] signifying a sound with abrupt onset is also supported by sound
effects containing [p-] in this group. Interestingly, especially the first sound in Table 13,
RIP!/RIP/RRITS, resulting from a coin ripping through fabric, supports the view that
[p] is brief even in Finnish: the English and the first Finnish translations have single
letters and are quite brief even in writing, but the second translation with a double r
changes the [p] into a [-ts]. [r-] is characterised as denoting irregular onset, which is
compatible with some examples of breakage in this corpus. Because [r] appears
independently and in rather many sounds of breakage in English and in Finnish, I
suggest that [r] refers to breakage in both languages. In English, it also appears in the
previously mentioned combination [kr-].
88
5.2.3.6 Explosions and gunshots
Source of sound
English
Finnish
Comic
gun with suppressor
PFFT
PFFT
BAT
gunshot
KBLAMMM
KBLAMMM
BAT
gunshot
KBLAM
KBLAM
BAT
gunshot
KBLAMM
KBLAMM
BAT
machine gun
BRAKABRAKABR
BRAKABRAKABR
BAT
machine gun
BRAKA
BRAKA
BAT
machine gun
BRAKK
BRAKK
BAT
shotgun
KPOW!
PAUU
DDR1
hand grenade
POOMM
POOMM
BAT
imitating cannon
BANG
BANG
PEA
volcanic activity
BUMMMMMM
mistaken for cannon
JYRIN
DDR2
volcanic activity
BUMMM
mistaken for cannon
JYMIN
DDR2
Table 14: Sound effects for explosions and gunshots
The sound effects for explosions and gunshots, collected into Table 14, seem rather
uniform and are perhaps the most homogeneous group among all the effects. In English,
all of them have [p] or [b] in the beginning of the word, either initially or preceded by
[k]; as such, all begin with a stop sound. [p] and [b] are identified by Rhodes as
involving abrupt onset, and I would suggest that [k] also depicts abrupt onset in some
situations. Intuitively, it seems possible that two stop sounds together depict a double
onset of the sound they are in.
None of the sounds contain [i], except for a few booming sound effects in Finnish, and
[æ]
is
very
frequent.
BUMMMMMM/JYRIN,
BUMMM/JYMIN,
and
POOMM/POOMM depict sounds resembling an explosion rather than a gunshot, hence
the lack of [æ]. The Finnish translations JYRIN and JYMIN do not conform to the rest
of these types of sound effects very well, but this can be caused by several factors.
Firstly, few of the other sound effects are translated at all, and these translations contain
the sound [y], which does not exist in English. Secondly, the sound effects' meaning
differs slightly from the others because they are the rumbling of volcanic activity but are
89
mistaken as a cannon by the characters of the story. Because the interpretation of the
sounds can vary, there is also room for variation in how they are depicted. Thirdly, the
sound is prolonged instead of abrupt. Fourthly, the effects are based on the existing
Finnish words 'jyrinä' and 'jyminä', which refer to rumbling or roaring.
PFFT stands out among the effects as the only one with no vowels. The difference can
be explained by what PFFT depicts, however. It is a sound of a gunshot as are most of
the others, but the crucial difference is that this particular gun has a suppressor on. The
effects of the silencer on the sound effect are interesting: the initial [p-] is typical of
abrupt sounds, but the sound is muffled by the absence of vowels and the presence of
the fricative [f]. The abrupt [t] brings the sound to a sudden end. KPOW/PAUU, then
again, indicates how the sound of a gunshot ricochets in a confined area through
lengthening the vowel. Vowel sounds are characterised by the airflow moving without
constriction, and apparently eliminating and replacing them with other sounds makes a
sound more constricted.
There are few actual Finnish translations among the examples since most of the sound
effects of this group come from BAT in which embedded sound effects are not
translated at all. The English rules might apply to some extent, but the few Finnish
effects do not provide enough material to draw conclusions on what kinds of sound
effects Finnish uses for gunshots and explosions. The effect BANG/BANG, together
with further examples scattered throughout the corpus, however, perhaps shows that
well-established sound effects tend to be kept in their original form; the sound [æ] in
BANG could be written with its own letter ä in Finnish, but it has been rewritten with
the original a instead. This points to the fact that some English sound effects are so
established even among Finnish readers that they can be used even in their foreign
orthography.
90
5.2.4 Sound effects by property
5.2.4.1 Sounds with long duration
Source of sound
English
Finnish
Second
Finnish
translation
Comic
thunder
BOOMM!
BOOMM!
BOOMM!
C&H
volcanic activity
BUMMMMM
JYRIN
DDR2
volcanic activity
BUMMMMMMMM JYMIN
MM
DDR2
pyroclastic flow
WHOOOOOOOOO
OSHHH!
DDR2
sand pouring into
cave
CRSSHH!
Natural
VVVUUUSSH
HH
DDR1
water flooding cave ROAR!
KOSSH
DDR1
mob of kangaroos
RUMBLE!
JYRINÄÄ
DDR1
mob of kangaroos
RUMBLE!
JYMINÄÄ
DDR1
mob of kangaroos
RUMBLE!
JYRIN
DDR1
roaring water
ROAR!
JYMIN
DDR1
roaring water
ROAR!
KOHINAA
DDR1
tsunami
RRROOAARRRR!
VRRRUMMM
M
DDR2
wave
ROAR!
ROAR!
DDR2
PSSHHHH
DDR2
temperature change; HSSSSS!
cooling down
Mechanical
imitating car
RRRUMRUMM
BRUUUMM
BRUUUMM
BRUUUMM
BRUUUMM
C&H
imitating car
RRRRR
BRUUM
BRUUM
C&H
imitating car
RRUMMM
BRRRR
BRRRR
C&H
prototype of car
RURRURRURRR
RURRURRUR
RUR
DDR2
prototype of car
VUH-ROOOM!
VA-ROUUMM
DDR2
prototype of car
VROOM!
VROOM!
DDR2
prototype of car
V-VRROOM!
VROUM
DDR2
91
prototype of car
VROOM!
VRUUM
DDR2
imitating car horn
BEEP BEEP
TÖÖT TÖÖT
car brakes
SCREEECHH
SCREEECHH
BAT
car brakes
SKREEEEEEE
SKREEEEEEE
BAT
imitating siren
OOOOOEEE
OOOOOEEE
OOOOOEEE
C&H
imitating siren
EEBOOEE
PIIPAA PII-
PIIPAA PII-
C&H
imitating siren
BOOEEBOO
PAA PIIPAA
PAA PIIPAA
C&H
imitating siren
WAHHHOOOOOO
UUIIIUUUUIII UUIIIUUUUII C&H
II
III
siren
EEEEEE
EEEEEE
phone
RINNGG!
RINNGG!
whistle
FWEET!
FIIII!
burp
BUHRÖÖÖÖYYHH RÖÖÖÖYYH C&H
URRRRRRRRRRRP
H
hush
SHH...
TÖÖT TÖÖT
C&H
BAT
RINNGG!
C&H
Human and animal
DDR2
SHH...
PEA
beginning to sneeze AH?
AA?
PEA
sneeze
AHCHOO!
AATSHII!
PEA
emu
WAAOOGH!
BUUU-UAAH
DDR1
disgust
EWWW.
YÄÄÄH.
stairs creaking
KREEE
KREEE
BAT
gas grenade
SSSSS
SSSSS
BAT
boat surfacing
SPLOOSH!
SPLOOSH!
DDR2
sinking into snow
SPLOOP
SPLOOP
YÄÄÄH.
C&H
Miscellaneous
sliding down rope
VIUP
SUIHH
C&H
DDR2
Table 15: Sound effects with long duration
This category serves as a contrast to the abrupt sounds of impact and explosion.
Continuous or otherwise longer-lasting sounds are numerous in the corpus, but they are
sometimes difficult to categorise. The same sound effect could be interpreted as
depicting, for instance, both a fall and the impact the fall ends with. Nonetheless, sound
effects that last for a long time are as numerous as they are varied, which is why they
have been loosely divided into subgroups in Table 15.
92
Some similarities are found even in this heterogeneous group of sound effects, however.
Stop sounds, previously identified as short, abrupt sounds, are rarer in these effects than
in many of the others. This can be explained by the fact that stops cannot be prolonged,
a property which makes them unsuited to sound effects that are supposed to take a long
time. In a similar vein, the most obvious common denominator between a majority of
the sound effects in this category is that repeating a letter makes a sound longer. This
need not always be the case, however, as in the case of ROAR/JYMIN: in the Englishlanguage effect, a diphthong is long enough. There is no repetition in the Finnish sound
either, but it has several syllables. RUMBLE/JYRINÄÄ does not contain even a
diphthong. I suggest that [r] and the nasals [m] and [n] give this sound a longer quality.
The sound [m] seems to be a device for prolonging a sound in both languages as the
sound that can be prolonged. Vowels and [r] share the quality of being easily prolonged,
making them common in longer sound effects.
5.2.4.2 Pitch
Besides differences between different kinds of actions, there is some difference between
how loud, low-pitched sounds and high-pitched sounds are portrayed in comics. I
suggest that the role of vowels is more significant in determining the pitch or loudness
of a sound than in determining other aspects of the sound, such as those in section 5.2.3.
Grouping a comic's sounds as high or low in order to find similarities within the group
is somewhat problematic, however. The problem lies in determining which sound is
high and which is low because preconceptions of what high sounds and low sounds look
like may determine the division. For example, an e in an English effect or an i in a
Finnish one tend to point to a high-pitched sound, while o, among others, refers to lower
sounds, as can be seen from the tendencies in Table 16 and Table 17 below. Therefore,
grouping them following intuitive clues may lead to results reflecting certain
preconceptions. Because of this, each sound effect's meaning and context must be
scrutinised even more closely to determine whether or not they belong to the category
'high-pitched' or 'low-pitched'. Even this is difficult because, for example, the
mechanism behind a high-pitch whistle and a low-pitch fog horn differs only slightly.
93
Because a much more detailed phonetic or acoustic analysis would be necessary in
determining a sound’s perceived pitch in sound effects, this section can only speculate
what the conventions for depicting pitch in comics might be. Such factors as a vowel’s
roundness, backness or other aspects of its articulation may affect its perceived pitch,
but examining these aspects is beyond the scope of this thesis. My examination is more
focused on my corpus and the distribution of letters and sounds in my material. For this
purpose, sound effects interpreted as high-pitched are listed in Table 16 and those
interpreted as low-pitched are collected into Table 17. Sounds from some actions may
not necessarily even be perceived as particularly high or low before they are presented
in the visual form of comics where the transcription might point in either direction. This
makes distinguishing between high and low sounds difficult at times, and some effects
do not fit either category.
94
Source of sound English
Finnish
Second Finnish Comic
translation
hanging up a
telephone
*CLICK*
*KLIK*
*KLIK*
C&H
tinkle of coin
TINK!
TINK
PLINK
DDB
tinkle of coin
TINKLE!
PLINK
KLINK
DDB
tinkle of coin
PLINK!
TLINK
PLINK
DDB
creaking stairs
KREEE
KREEE
BAT
pieces of lamp
falling
PING PING PING
PING PING PING PING PING
PING
C&H
lamp breaking
KRITCH KRUNCH RITS RATS
RITS RATS
C&H
disgust
EWWW.
YÄÄÄH.
YÄÄÄH.
C&H
gas grenade
SSSSS
SSSSS
BAT
hushing
SHH...
SHH...
PEA
hiccup
HIC!
HIK!
PEA
whistle
FWEET!
FIIII!
DDR2
imitating siren
OOOOOEEE
OOOOOEEE
OOOOOEEE
C&H
imitating siren
EEBOOEE
PIIPAA PII-
PIIPAA PII-
C&H
imitating siren
BOOEEBOO
PAA PIIPAA
PAA PIIPAA
C&H
imitating siren
WAHHHOOOOOO UUIIIUUUUI
UUIIIUUUUI
C&H
siren
EEEEEEEEEEE
EEEEEEEEEEE
doorbell
DING DONG
DING DONG
DING DONG
C&H
phone ringing
RINGG
RINGG
RINGG
C&H
imitating car
horn
BEEP BEEP
TÖÖT TÖÖT
TÖÖT TÖÖT
C&H
car brakes
SCHREEECHH
SCHREEECHH
BAT
car brakes
SKREEEEEEE
SKREEEEEEE
BAT
bats
SKEE
SKEE
BAT
Table 16: High-pitched sound effects
95
BAT
Source of sound
English
Finnish
Second
Finnish
translation
Comic
head hitting wall
THUD!
TUNKS
KLONK
DDB
hitting pole
BONK!
BONK!
DDR2
thudding onto
ground
WHOMP
WHOMP
PEA
thud
THUMP
THUMP
PEA
thud
THOOM
THOOM
BAT
bouncing ball
BUMPETY-BUMP
kick
THWOKK
THWOKK
BAT
door slamming
SLAM!
SLAM!
PEA
tiger attack
WUMP!
WUMP!
eating
CHOMP
MUMPS
happiness
HMMMMMMM
HMMMMMMM
burp
BUHRÖÖÖÖYYHH
URRRRRRRRRRRP
groaning
NNGG
NNGG
BAT
grunting
NNNNNN
NNNNNN
BAT
coughing
>KOFF<
KÖH!
BAT
disgust
EWWW.
YÄÄÄH.
didgeridoo
TWOOOAAUUT!
TUUU-OOO
DDR1
emu
WAAOOGH!
BUUU-UAAH
DDR1
cattle
WAAHH!
MMÖÖHH!
DDR2
rhino
SNORT
HÖRK!
DDR2
mob of kangaroos RUMBLE!
JYRINÄÄ
DDR1
mob of kangaroos RUMBLE!
JYMINÄÄ
DDR1
mob of kangaroos RUMBLE!
JYRIN
DDR1
stampeding cattle STOMPITY
JYTIN
DDR2
stampeding cattle STOMP
JYTIN
DDR2
masses of water
ROAR!
JYMIN
DDR1
masses of water
ROAR!
JYRIN
DDR1
masses of water
ROAR!
KOHINAA
DDR1
masses of water
ROAR!
JYRINÄÄ
DDR1
tsunami
RRROOAARRRR!
VRRUMMMM
DDR2
wave
ROAR!
ROAR!
DDR2
PEA
96
TUMPS!
C&H
PEA
HMMMMM C&H
MM
RÖÖÖÖYY C&H
HH
YÄÄÄH.
C&H
volcanic activity
BUMMMMM
pyroclastic flow
WHOOOOOOOOOO VVVUUUSSHHH
SHHH!
DDR2
prototype of car
RURRURRURRR
RURRURRURRUR
DDR2
prototype of car
VUH-ROOOM!
VA-ROUUMM
DDR2
prototype of car
VROOM!
VROOM
DDR2
prototype of car
VROOM!
VROUM
DDR2
prototype of car
VROOM!
VRUUM
DDR2
imitating car
RRRUMRUMM
BRUUUMM
BRUUUMM
BRUUUMM C&H
BRUUUMM
imitating car horn BEEP BEEP
TÖÖT TÖÖT
TÖÖT
TÖÖT
steamboat
CHUG CHUG
CHUG
TSUK TSUK
TSUK
DDR2
helicopter
WHUP WHUP
WHUP
WHUP WHUP
WHUP
BAT
hand grenade
POOMM
POOMM
BAT
gunshot
KBLAMM
KBLAMM
BAT
machine gun
BRAKABRAKA
BRAKABRAKA
BAT
imitating cannon
BANG
BANG
PEA
boat surfacing
SPLOOSH!
SPLOOSH!
DDR2
SPLOOP
C&H
sinking into snow SPLOOP
JYRIN
DDR2
C&H
Table 17: Low-pitched sound effects
Some sound effects are included in both of the tables. This is because they either
alternate between different pitches or are perceived as high-pitched sounds in one
language and low-pitched sounds in the other. These types of sound effects may prove
useful in determining which vowels are perceived as high-pitched or low-pitched at
least in this context. The sound effects OOOOOEEE, EEBOOEE, BOOEEBOO,
WAHHHOOOOOO (in English) and OOOOOEEE, PIIPAA PII-, PAA PIIPAA,
UUIIIUUUUI (in Finnish) can be taken up in this context as interesting examples. They
indicate the sound Calvin makes through several panels, which he calls it his siren,
informing people of his whereabouts. Obviously, it imitates the siren of an emergency
vehicle. The sound fits the lists of both high-pitched and low-pitched sounds because
the siren, in a sense, alternates between pitches. This is a good example of what can be
achieved through changing the vowel of the “same” sound effect: in English, o
97
alternates with e, and in Finnish, o, a, and u alternate with i. In English, a repeated e is,
in practice, pronounced the same way as the letter i in Finnish, and the sound is
essentially the same, [i]. Based on this sound effect alone, [i] is a high vowel sound
while [o], [a], and the Finnish [u] are lower-pitched vowel sounds. DING DONG
reflects similar alteration between high and low, as does KRITCH KRUNCH/RITS
RATS. The pairs EWWW./YÄÄÄH. and BEEP BEEP/TÖÖT TÖÖT represent a case in
which the original sound effect is considerably higher than the translation, which
follows the conventional Finnish transcription of similar sounds.
Besides the above examples, which alternate between high and low, the rest of the
listing suggests that the sound [i], represented by a long e in English and i in Finnish,
probably means high pitch. Its combination with different consonants determines the
kind of action taking place. A more detailed phonetic and acoustic might help to define
the other vowel sounds in terms of high or low pitch, at least in relation to each other.
5.2.5 Discussion on the sound effects
It is not always easy to categorise sound effects because their semantic content and
functions are not always clear. This fuzziness in interpretation is also bound to
complicate the translation process, especially in comics in which the aim is to translate
most of the effects. Determining the meaning of a sound effect is difficult because even
a single phoneme can represent several different aspects of a sound. This means that a
single sound effect combines elements from the different categories above.
For example, the Finnish sound effect SKLÄT depicts a sound emanating from a pie
fight, with pies splashing onto people. Based on this description, it is categorised as
both a wet sound and a sound of impact. I suggested that [-læt-] symbolises water or
wetness, but also noted that [kl-] is present in several sounds of impact, while [s] is
quite frequent in water-related sounds. The first two suggestions contain [l] in different
contexts, and this combination results in a package of a wet sound of impact, where the
wetness is further emphasised by the initial [s]. Not all sound effects are distinct
combinations of identifiable features, however, and this effect probably is an exception.
First of all, the meaning of this particular sound effect is very clear. Secondly, the
98
translation of the comic contains little interference from the source-language sound
effects and mostly uses established Finnish effects. Thirdly, the effect refers to rather
common themes and distinct sources of sound that are likely to have well-established
rules for how they are depicted in sound effects.
A closer examination of the individual sound effects reveals that there is variation even
in how a single sound effect in English can be translated into Finnish in several ways,
depending on its meaning. Similar meanings are conveyed through similar means,
however, and some of the findings match the sound symbols introduced before. This is
probably accounted for by onomatopoeia or sound symbolism. I am suggesting some
additional English sound symbols in Table 18 below. The suggested sound symbols may
be more specific than the ones introduced by Bloomfield (1933) and Rhodes (1994)
(discussed in section 4.1), and sounds of impact and breakage may probably also be
characterised as abrupt, for example. However, such an assumption cannot necessarily
be made based on my corpus alone.
Sound or feature
Association
Example
-ŋk
impact
PLONK, CHINK
f
friction
PFFT
s, h
hissing of air
SHH
pl-
liquid
SPLAT
spl-
liquid (+ impact)
SPLUT
gu-
liquid
GULP
-ʃ
liquid
SPLASH
-m-
food/eating
CHOMP
kr-
breakage
CRUNCH
r
breakage
RIP
k-
abrupt onset
SPAKK
-æ-
gunshot
KBLAM
m
long-lasting
BOOMM
lack of vowels
constricted
PFFT
repeated letters
long-lasting
HSSSSS
Table 18: Suggested English sound symbols
99
There were few Finnish sound symbols to compare the effects of the corpus with, so my
candidates for Finnish sound symbols were extracted mostly by comparing the Finnish
effects with the English effects of the corpus and the English sound symbols. The
potential Finnish sound symbols identified in this study are presented in Table 19.
Sound or feature
Association
Example
p, k, t
impact
PLINK
MOKS
TUMPS
-ŋk
impact
TUNKS
-ts
impact
PLÄTS
-ks
impact
MOKS
kl-
impact
KLINK
pl-
impact
PLINK
-ps
abrupt
HUMPS
fricative (esp. sibilants and [h]) friction
HHHHHSSSSSSSS
(-)viu-
air current
SVIUH
s, h
air stream
SHH
fricative (esp. sibilants and [h]) air stream
HHHHHSSSSSSSS
v-
air current
VIUP
-ts-
liquid
PLÄTS
-sk-
liquid
MOLSK
pl-
liquid
PLÄTS
spl-
liquid (+ impact)
SPLÄT
sk-
liquid
MOLSK
-ʃ
liquid
KOSSH
-læt- (esp. with s/p/k)
liquid
LÄTSIS
-ts
breakage
RITS
p
short
RIP
r
breakage
RRITS
m
long-lasting
JYMINÄÄ
n
long-lasting
JYMIN
repeated letters
long-lasting
BRRRR
Table 19: Suggested Finnish sound symbols
100
Again, further research is necessary to determine if these sounds are used in a similar
way outside my corpus. Because consonants and consonant clusters are so frequent in
the descriptions of what certain actions sound like, the role of vowels in sound
symbolism would deserve further examination. Based on my limited analysis of the
sounds with different pitches, I suggest that consonants determine the type of action
while vowels seem to focus more on altering the pitch of the sound. The relative
homogeneity within some of the categories discussed above suggests that the effects
have not been created randomly but follow some common rules.
6 Conclusion
The corpus comprised sound effects and their translations from seven different comics:
two Donald Duck stories by Don Rosa, one Duck story from Carl Barks, Peanuts strips
by Charles M. Schulz, Calvin and Hobbes strips by Bill Watterson, part of an album of
Batman by Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli, and part of Watchmen by Alan Moore
and Dave Gibbons. The first part of the study examined translation strategies and factors
affecting their use in these comics. The initial assumptions on what aspects of the sound
effects affect their translation mostly proved correct: their location in the comic, their
embeddedness in pictures, and the genre they appear in were all found to influence their
translation. Sound effects in balloons were translated more often than sound effects that
were located outside perigrams. Sound effects placed against a simple background
exhibited some variety in how often and how they were translated in the different
comics but, on the whole, were translated more often than sound effects that had
become a part of the imagery of a panel and would require the image to be retouched
more if translated. Genre differences manifested themselves especially in how much
was left untranslated: effects in the humorous comics were translated more often than
the sound effects in Batman and Watchmen. Of the humorous comics, the Duck stories,
in particular, were translated with care, and little was left in its English form in the
translations. Uniajan urho was the only comic that retained no English effects in their
original form, however.
It was found that different translation strategies had been used in the comics of this case
study. Repetitio of the original English form of the sound effect and straightforward
101
translation were the most common strategies, but substitutio also occurred rather
frequently in the form of minor adjustments in typography, for example. Adiectio
appears to have been used in conjunction with deletio, as some translations tended to
use a wider variety of translation strategies than the others. Deletio also occurred once
in a situation where retaining the sound effect might have been necessary, however.
Transmutatio appears to have taken place especially when embedded sound effects were
translated, for example, but it was relatively rare.
Further research could be conducted on similar comics to find out if the findings in this
thesis are in line with the conventions followed by other comics. More extensive and
systematic examination of comics of any particular type could confirm and uncover
possible genre conventions. In general, however, it would be more fruitful to examine
comics in which most of the effects have been translated instead of ones in which most
of the effects remain the same in the translation.
The second part of the study focused on sound symbolism by examining the sound
effects of the corpus, because sound effects are to some extent free from some of the
restrictions a language poses on its ordinary words. The individual sound effects were
categorised on the basis of the depicted actions, the materials involved, and the qualities
of the sounds themselves. The following categories were examined in this thesis:
impact, friction, air current, liquid and food, breakage, explosions and gunshots,
duration, and pitch. Some potential Finnish and English sound symbols were extracted
from the material in the corpus, and further research could be put into studying if they
are used in other contexts and in ordinary words. Even though the effects were
compared to previously identified sound symbols, the potential new sound symbols
listed represent only this corpus. Further research on different material is needed to
confirm these findings. Other interesting categories and themes could involve the source
of the sound (human, animal, natural, mechanical) and the effects of such variables as
size, speed, and softness or solidity of objects involved in the action. Some individual
cases of changes in temperature and other rarer sounds were found in the corpus but
were not numerous enough to be examined, so such aspects could later be studied, too,
with more suitable material.
The variation in the use of translation strategies in this corpus hopefully serves as a
102
reminder that numerous different strategies can be used even on such a small detail as
sound effects. The choice of translation strategy is affected by several factors, but the
choice is important because the reader's experience of a comic is affected even by its
sound effects.
103
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106
Suomenkielinen lyhennelmä
Tässä pro gradu -tutkielmassa tarkastellaan sarjakuvien äänitehosteiden kääntämistä
tapaustutkimuksen kautta. Englanninkieliset tehosteet ja niiden suomenkieliset
käännökset kerättiin seitsemästä eri sarjakuvasta yhteen korpukseen, jonka perusteella
tutkittiin äänitehosteiden kääntämistapoja sekä niiden kääntämiseen tai kääntämättä
jättämiseen mahdollisesti vaikuttavia tekijöitä. Lisäksi yksittäisiä äänitehosteita
tarkasteltiin ja jaoteltiin sisältönsä perusteella.
Teoreettiset lähtökohdat
Sarjakuvien äänitehosteiden kääntämistä ei Suomessa ole liiemmin tutkittu, mutta
esimerkiksi ranska–espanja-kieliparilla tehtyä tutkimusta on olemassa (ks. Sierra
Soriano, 1999). Tämän tutkielman toinen osa keskittyy kuitenkin äänitehosteisiin
äännesymboliikan näkökannalta, mikä on uusi lähestymistapa, sillä äänitehosteita ei
tietääkseni ole ennen tutkittu tällä tavalla. Tämä tutkielma sisältää siis osittain
pioneeritutkimusta, ja käytetyt metodit ovat jossain määrin itse kehittelemiäni,
vaikkakin ne pohjautuvat aiempaan sarjakuvan, sarjakuvan kääntämisen, äänten
matkimisen ja äännesymboliikan tutkimukseen. Joitain tärkeimmistä viitatuista
tutkimuksista esitellään alla.
Kaindl (1999) ja Celotti (2008) ovat jaotelleet sarjakuvissa esiintyviä tekstejä: tekstiä
voi
olla
tunnisteena
puhekuplissa,
osana
otsikoissa,
kuvia
ja
kertovana
ääniraitana
onomatopoeioissa.
laatikoissa,
Kaindlin
mukaan
dialogina
ottama
'onomatopoeia' eli äänten matkiminen jää merkitykseltään hieman erilliseksi muista
sarjakuvien tekstityypeistä, joten tässä tutkielmassa hänen tarkoittamansa ilmiö
määriteltiin laajemmin äänitehosteiksi, joiden merkitys ja käyttö on selkeämmin rajattu
sarjakuvissa – ja jotka ovat tämän tutkielman tutkimuskohde.
Tekstin erottaminen kuvista ei kuitenkaan aina ole yksinkertaista, ja sarjakuvien
tekstuaalisetkin elementit voivat olla hyvin visuaalisesti esitettyjä. Esimerkiksi
äänitehoste voi olla lähes erottamaton osa kuvaa tai kirjoitettu koristeellisella tai muuten
erikoisella fontilla. Muutenkin kuvan ja tekstin saumaton yhteistyö sarjakuvissa voi
i
vaikeuttaa kääntäjän työtä, sillä se tarkoittaa, että kuvan ja tekstin täytyy myös
käännöksessä täydentää toisiaan olematta ristiriidassa keskenään (esim. Valero Garcés,
2000). Kuvan ja tekstin vuorovaikutus voi kuitenkin olla myös voimavara (Zanettin,
2009), mikä ilmeni myös tässä tutkimuksessa, jonka korpuksessa kuvat mahdollistivat
myös äänitehosteiden poistamisen joissain tilanteissa.
Kuvan ja tekstin yhteistyön takia sarjakuvien kääntämisessä hyödynnetään hieman
erilaisia strategioita kuin pelkkää tekstiä sisältävien lähdetekstien kääntämisessä. Kaindl
(1999) on tuonut Delabastitan (1989) audiovisuaaliseen kääntämiseen soveltuvat
käännösstrategiat sarjakuvien yhteyteen. Strategioiden jaottelua analysoitiin ja verrattiin
tässä tutkielmassa Celottin (2008) listaan kuvaan upotettuihin teksteihin soveltuvista
käännösstrategioista,
ja
seuraavat
strategiat
todettiin
tämän
tutkimuksen
äänitehostekäännösten kannalta relevanteiksi: 'repetitio', 'deletio', 'adiectio', 'substitutio',
'transmutatio' ja 'kääntäminen'. Toisin sanoen äänitehoste voidaan toistaa käännöksessä
lähdekielisessä muodossaan, poistaa, lisätä, korvata, siirtää tai kääntää kohdekieliseksi
ilmaisuksi. Tutkimuksen ensimmäisessä osassa korpuksessa esiintyviä äänitehosteita
tutkittiin tämän jaottelun pohjalta.
Tutkimuksen
toisessa
osassa
keskityttiin
äänitehosteisiin
ääntä
matkivien
onomatopoeettisten ilmauksien ja äännesymboliikan näkökulmasta. Tätä varten
esiteltiin onomatopoeiaa, äännesymboliikkaa ja esimerkiksi Bloomfieldin (1933) ja
Rhodesin (1994) kuvaamia äännesymboliikkaa sisältäviä äänteitä tai äänneyhdistelmiä
englannin kielessä, ja toisen osan tutkimustuloksia verrattiin jo kuvattuihin
äännesymboleihin. Äännesymbolit ovat tiettyjä äänteitä, jotka liittyvät joihinkin
määrättyihin piirteisiin, joita symboleita sisältävän sanan tarkoitteella on. Koska kielillä
kuitenkin on käytössään rajallinen määrä äänteitä, nämä äännesymbolit pätevät joissain
konteksteissa, mutta samat äänteet eivät poikkeuksetta tarkoita jotain tiettyä asiaa.
Mahdollisia aiemmin listaamattomia, tiettyjä merkityksiä kantavia äänteitä etsittiin
vertailemalla samantyyppisiä äänitehosteita toisiinsa. Esimerkiksi Rhodes on kuitenkin
käyttänyt erilaisia jaotteluperusteita kuin tässä tutkimuksessa käytettiin. Rhodesin
äännesymbolit liittyvät muun muassa äänen alkamistapaan tai ääneen liittyvään
liikkeeseen, kun taas tässä tutkimuksessa jaottelu lähti käytetyn korpuksen
äänitehosteiden merkityksestä ja sisällöstä sekä niiden yleisyydestä.
ii
Tapaustutkimuksen materiaali ja metodit
Korpuksen
sisältämät
sarjakuvat
edustivat
erityyppisiä
sarjakuvia,
mutta
huumorisarjakuvia oli tutkimuksessa enemmän. Tutkielmassa tarkasteltiin yhtä Carl
Barksin Aku Ankka -tarinaa, kahta Don Rosan Aku Ankka -tarinaa, joitakin strippejä
Charles M. Schulzin Tenavat-sarjakuvaa ja Bill Wattersonin Lassi ja Leevi -sarjakuvaa,
osaa Frank Millerin ja David Mazzucchellin Batman: Ensimmäinen vuosi -albumista ja
osaa Alan Mooren ja Dave Gibbonsin Vartijat-albumista. Joidenkin sarjakuvien
käännöksistä tutkittiin useampia versiota. Valinnat oli tehty sillä perusteella, että
sarjakuvat edustaisivat mahdollisimman erityyppisiä sarjakuvia, jotta genren vaikutusta
käännösratkaisuihin voisi tutkia. Aku Ankka -sarjakuvien painottaminen perustuu siihen,
että tämän suomalaisille kovin tärkeän sarjakuvan käännöksissä oletettiin olevan
enemmän vaihtelua kuin esimerkiksi supersankarisarjakuvien tehosteissa.
Korpukseen kelpuutettiin äänitehosteiksi kaikki tehosteet, jotka täyttivät tutkielmassa
äänitehosteille asetetut suhteellisen väljät kriteerit: erilaiset ääntä jäljittelevät,
onomatopoeettiset ilmaisut – olivat ne sitten leksikaalistuneita tai tilapäisiä ilmaisuja –
sekä sanat, jotka eivät ole onomatopoeettisia mutta toimivat käytännössä täysin
äänitehosteiden kaltaisesti (esim. TYÖNTÖ). Ei-onomatopoeettisia ilmaisuja ei rajattu
korpuksen ulkopuolelle esimerkiksi siitä syystä, että niitä on erittäin vaikeaa erotella
ääntä jäljittelevistä ilmaisuista. Korpuksen ulkopuolelle rajattiin kuitenkin äänitehosteet,
jotka esiintyvät keskellä dialogia. Tämä rajaus perustuu siihen, että äänitehosteen
erottaminen dialogista voi joskus olla lähes mahdotonta, jos sana esimerkiksi muuttuu
kesken kaiken spontaaniksi huudoksi (esim. repliikki ”OLEN KOTONAUUHH!”
tutkitussa Lassi ja Leevi -albumissa). Omissa puhekuplissaan esiintyvät äänitehosteet
sen sijaan otettiin mukaan korpukseen.
Oletus oli, että sarjakuvien äänitehosteiden kääntämiseen vaikuttaisi genren lisäksi
äänitehosteen sijainti ruudussa, eli käytännössä se, kuinka paljon äänitehosteen
kääntämiseen liittyisi kuvan muokkaamista. Puhekuplaan sijoitettu äänitehoste olisi
todennäköisimmin käännetty, koska se vertautuu jossain määrin dialogiin ja sijaitsee
käännettävän dialogin joukossa. Äänitehoste voi kuitenkin sijaita myös kuvassa, jolloin
sitä ei jonkin verran todennäköisemmin olisi käännetty. Tehoste voi kuitenkin
puhekuplien ulkopuolellakin sijaita erilaisissa paikoissa: se voi olla joko upotettu
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suoraan osaksi kuvaa tai sijaita kohdassa, jossa se ei osu varsinaisen kuvituksen päälle
(esimerkiksi pelkkää sinistä taivasta tai tyhjää seinää vasten). Koska kuvan osana
toimivan äänitehosteen muokkaaminen on hankalampaa kuin puhekuplassa tai
esimerkiksi yksiväristä taustaa vasten olevan äänitehosteen, lähtöoletus oli, että kuvaan
upotetut äänitehosteet on suhteellisen usein tuotu käännökseen sellaisenaan.
Oletuksena oli myös, että supersankarisarjakuvia edustavan Batmanin äänitehosteita ei
olisi kovinkaan usein käännetty, sillä äänitehosteiden odotettiin useimmiten sijaitsevan
upotettuina kuviin. Aku Ankan
äänitehosteiden sen sijaan oletettiin olevan
idiomaattisesti käännettyjä, onhan Aku Ankka -lehti paitsi saavuttanut vankan aseman
suomalaisten lukijoiden keskuudessa, myös saanut tunnustusta hyvästä suomen kielen
käytöstään, ja sille on jopa myönnetty Helsingin yliopiston suomen kielen laitoksen
kielihelmi-palkinto vuonna 2001. Oletuksena oli lisäksi, että Aku Ankassa äänitehosteita
ei olisi jätetty pois ja että lähes kaikki äänitehosteet olisi käännetty.
Tutkimuksen toisessa osassa korpuksen äänitehosteet jaoteltiin semanttisen sisältönsä
mukaan ryhmiin. Ryhmät koostuivat äänitehosteita, jotka liittyivät iskuihin,
rikkoutumiseen, räjähdyksiin ja ampumiseen, hankaukseen, ilmavirtaan tai ruokaan ja
nesteisiin, tai olivat kestoltaan pitkiä tai äänenkorkeudeltaan selvästi korkeita tai
matalia. Ryhmät edustivat äänten kuvaamia tapahtumia, niiden syntymiseen vaikuttavia
materiaaleja tai äänten itsensä ominaisuuksia. Muulla, laajemmalla materiaalilla voisi
tutkia lisäksi muun muassa äänen lähteen (ihminen, eläin, muu luontoääni, kone), äänen
aiheuttavan esineen koon ja kovuuden sekä harvinaisempien lämpötilan vaihteluiden
vaikutuksia äänitehosteen laatuun ja ulkonäköön. Luokiteltujen äänitehosteiden
kielellisiä ominaisuuksia verrattiin muista tutkimuksista koottuihin äännesymboleihin,
ja yksittäisten ryhmien tehosteiden toistuvia ominaisuuksia analysoitiin, jotta saataisiin
tietoa siitä, miten englanti ja suomi kuvaavat kyseisten ryhmien kuvaamia tapahtumia
tai ominaisuuksia ääntein ja kirjaimin.
Tutkimustulokset
Äänitehosteiden sijoittelu ruudun sisällä vaikutti odotetusti niiden kääntämistapaan ja
kääntämiseen tai kääntämättä jättämiseen monessa sarjakuvassa, joskaan ei kaikissa.
Puhekuplien sisältämiä tehosteita oli muokattu eniten. Odotetusti vähiten oli muutettu
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kuviin upotettuja äänitehosteita, ja esimerkiksi Lassi ja Leevi-käännöksissä ne saivat
lähes järjestään jäädä kuviin sellaisenaan. Puhekuplien ulkopuolella sijaitsevia mutta
käytännössä helposti muokattavia tehosteita oli käännetty vaihtelevasti, mutta niissä
käännettyjen
tehosteiden
määrä
sijoittui
pääasiassa
kahden
edellä
mainitun
tehostetyypin välimaastoon.
Eniten käytettyjä käännösstrategioita olivat repetitio ja kääntäminen. Deletio oli
harvinaista, mutta poistoja esiintyi muutamassa sarjakuvassa. Kuitenkin vain yhdessä
Tenavat-stripissä
äänitehosteiden
poistaminen
hankaloitti
vitsin
ymmärtämistä.
Pienimuotoista tai osittaista deletiota edustaa sekin muutos, että alkuperäisissä
tehosteissa paikoitellen ylenpalttisesti käytettyjä huutomerkkejä oli poistettu monen
sarjakuvan käännöksessä. Adiectiota esiintyi vain Aku Ankka -sarjakuvissa, joissa joitain
tehosteita oli lisätty kokonaan uusiin paikkoihin. Transmutatiota eli tehosteiden
siirtämistä käytettiin erityisesti silloin, kun kuvaan upotettuja äänitehosteita käännettiin,
sillä niitä oli toisinaan siirretty tyhjempään kohtaan kuvaa ja ruutua. Substitutiota
tulkittiin esiintyneen lähinnä tapauksissa, joissa äänitehosteen ulkonäköä tai esimerkiksi
eläinten äänten merkintätapaa oli muutettu merkittävästi. Tällaisten tapausten
yhteydessä havaittiin, että genren ja tehosteen sijainnin lisäksi tehosteen ulkoasu on
saattanut vaikuttaa sen käännökseen; erittäin visuaaliset tehosteet on saatettu jättää
alkuperäiseen asuunsa tai esittää pelkistetymmällä kirjasinlajilla käännöksessä.
Kuten oletettua, Aku Ankan eri tarinat ja versiot olivat hyvinkin huolella käännettyjä:
ensimmäisessä Rosa-tarinassa jopa kaikki äänitehosteet oli käännetty niiden sijainnista
riippumatta. Yllätyksiäkin kuitenkin oli. Tehosteita on paitsi käännetty hyvin usein
myös lisätty ja poistettu visuaalisen kontekstin niin salliessa (deletio- ja adiectiokäännösstrategiat). Jotkin tällaiset muutokset vaikuttivat tarkkaan harkituilta valinnoilta
ja mahdollisesti toivat yksittäisille yksityiskohdille jonkin verran lisäarvoa. Käytännössä
eritoten Rosan tarinoissa käytettiin laajinta valikoimaa mahdollisia strategioita
repetition jäätyä vähemmälle kuin muissa sarjakuvissa.
Toiseen ääripäähän sijoittuivat odotetusti Vartijat- ja Batman-sarjakuvat. Alkuperäisessä
Watchmen-sarjakuvassa äänitehosteita ei ylipäätään ollut käytetty muualla kuin
puhekuplissa, ja äänitehosteiden käännöksetkin jäivät vähäisiksi. Alkuperäisessä
Batman-albumissa puolestaan äänitehosteita oli käytetty paljon osana kuvia, ja yhtäkään
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näistä upotetuista tehosteista ei ollut käännetty. Repetitio oli siis molemmissa
tummansävyisissä sarjakuvissa suosittu strategia. Puhekuplissa äänitehosteita sen sijaan
oli käännetty, mutta ei mittavissa määrin. Kiinnostavaa kyllä kuplien äänitehosteet oli
harvoin kopioitu suoraan kuvana alkuperäisestä sarjakuvasta, vaan ne oli usein tekstattu
kuplaan uudestaan muuttamatta tekstin sisältöä. Tällainen toimintatapa on kuitenkin
tulkittu repetitioksi tutkielmassa, sillä tehosteen kirjoitusasu oli muuttumaton.
Vertailevan korpustutkimuksen toisessa osassa äänitehosteet siis jaoteltiin kuvaamansa
sisällön perusteella, ja jaotteluperusteina toimivat äänten kuvaamat tapahtumat, äänen
syntymiseen
osallistuvat
materiaalit
tai
äänitehosteiden
itsensä
ominaisuudet.
Äänitehosteita tutkittiin äännesymboliikan näkökulmasta, ja joidenkin ryhmien sisällä
oli joka tapauksessa huomattavissa hyvin paljon yhteneväisyyksiä, mikä kertoo siitä,
että äännesymboliikka ja äänten matkiminen ovat todennäköisesti vaikuttaneet
äänitehosteiden muodostukseen ainakin jossain määrin. Äänitehosteiden oletettiin
olevan tämäntyyppiseen tutkimukseen erityisen sopivia juuri siksi, että äänitehosteiden
voisi olettaa olevan vapaampia kielen oikeinkirjoitussäännöistä kuin vakiintuneiden
sanojen ja sisältävän enemmän äännesymboliikkaa. Eritoten monet englanninkieliset
äänitehosteet toimivat kuitenkin kielessä myös verbeinä ja substantiiveina tai perustuvat
olemassa oleviin sanoihin, joten asia ei ole niin yksiselitteinen. Verratessa saman
ryhmän tehosteiden tyypillisiä piirteitä keskenään löytyi kuitenkin englanniksikin
mahdollisia uusia merkitystä kantavia äänteitä tai äänneyhdistelmiä. Esimerkiksi [m]
voi kuvata syömisen ääntä, kun taas [-ʃ] voi liittyä veden tai nesteen liikkeeseen. Vaikka
näiden löydöksien pätevyyttä on syytä vielä tutkia laajemmalla aineistolla, tämän
tutkimuksen korpuksen pohjalta niitä voidaan pitää mahdollisina äännesymboleina.
Mahdollisia suomenkielisiä äännesymboleita etsittiin vertaamalla paitsi tietyn ryhmän
suomennettuja äänitehosteita toisiinsa ja englannissa esiintyviin äännesymboleihin,
myös etsimällä erityisesti äänteitä, joita ei alkuperäisissä tehosteissa ollut ja jotka siten
eivät voineet johtua ainakaan lähdetekstin interferenssistä. Esimerkkejä mahdollisista
suomalaisista äännesymboleista ovat [-læt-], joka esiintyi usein veteen liittyvissä
äänissä, joissa ei ollut interferenssiä englannista, [-ps], joka kuvasi yhtäkkisiä ääniä, ja
sibilantit, jotka kuvasivat ilmavirtaa ja hankausta. Myös näiden kohdalla lisätutkimus
olisi tarpeen sen selvittämiseksi, onko äänteitä käytetty vastaavasti myös tämän
tutkimuksen korpuksen ulkopuolella.
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Tutkimustulokset muistuttivat siitä, että pienetkin yksityiskohdat voivat olla tärkeitä
sujuvan ja miellyttävän lukukokemuksen takaamiseksi ja että äänitehosteidenkin
käännökset vaikuttavat sarjakuvasta saatavaan mielikuvaan. Joskus äänitehosteen
harkittu poistaminen ei häiritse tarinaa lainkaan, kun taas olennaisen tehosteen
jättäminen pois käännöksestä voi pahimmassa tapauksessa haitata esimerkiksi vitsin
ymmärtämistä. Käännökseen voi jopa lisätä äänitehosteita, jotka voivat tuoda lisäarvoa
esimerkiksi kyseisen ruudun sanomaan. Vaikka sarjakuvissa kuva väistämättä ohjaa
myös käännöstä, kuva ei ole kokonaan muokkaamattomissa, eikä se saisi olla ainoa
käännösstrategiaan vaikuttava tekijä.
vii